Welcome to the

Highland Mega Novice Ram Jam Tournament

The Mega Novice provides competition in speech events on Friday and debate events on Saturday for first year competitors. Features of the Mega Novice include:

Open tabroom to all coaches who would like to see results, assist with ballot entry, and learn to use Tabroom.com

• Varsity debaters are permitted and encouraged to judge
• Lots of trophies
• Pre-release of extemp questions
• All UHSAA events offered, including SpAr!

Schedule

Friday - congress and speech events

4:00 PM Round 1, Session 1 Congress

5:30 PM Round 2

6:00 PM Session 2 Congress

7:30 PM Round 3

Saturday - debate events

8:00 AM Round 1

9:30 AM Round 2

11:00 AM Round 3

12:30 PM Final round for all debaters with a record of 2-1 or better

Fees

Fees are $4 per entry, and the school fee is $30 for those schools attending both days. If your school is attending for only one day, please contact the tournament director to adjust your invoice to $15 for the school fee.

Due to the additional costs this year, there will be drop fees or nuisance fees, and fees will freeze the Wednesday prior to the tournament. This means that any fees added to your entry after that point will not be credited, even if the entry is removed from the tournament. In other words, make sure your entry is accurate before Monday.

Awards

Awards will be given to approximately the top five finishers in all events. In debate events, this will be all debaters who finish prelims with a record of 2-1 or better.

Events

On Friday, events include impromptu, oratory, extemp, interps (HI and DI), informative, and congressional debate.

On Saturday, events include CX, LD, and PF.

Rules

Events will follow norms and rules specified by the UHSAA and the Speech and Debate Association.

Policy debaters are expected to follow the novice policy rules described by the UHSAA. This includes limiting arguments to the provided case list.

Topics and Legislation

LD topic: Resolved: The member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for medicines.

Note from tournament director: The decision to NOT use the novice topic is intentional. All debaters should be prepared on the WTO topic.

PF topic: Resolved: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization should substantially increase its defense commitments to the Baltic states.

Policy topic: Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its protection of water resources in the United States.

Extemp topics: Extempers can expect to be presented three random topics from each list. The topics released for this tournament are on the link to the right.

Congress legislation: The congress docket can be found on the Utah Debate Coaches' Association website: https://utahdebatecoaches.org/landing-page/students/congress-legislation/

The Docket is listed at the right.

Double Entry

Double entry is permitted in speech events on Friday. Those doing congress are not permitted to double enter.

Judges

Varsity debaters may judge.