Welcome

Link to live doc for tournament:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wXdE-N6MCzMCafFcaZK2RyXj2NGM0klG9AErGrQGGqs/edit?usp=sharing

Hey everyone!

Thanks for considering this policy tournament. The goals are simple.

1. To provide high-quality open division debates for policy students in the Mountain West and beyond. The goal is to balance a humane schedule with opportunities to get a variety of judges and verbal feedback.

2. To provide a high-quality novice debate opportunity with the packet division, where students will also get high quality feedback from judges.

3. To provide an opportunity for programs who don’t traditionally do policy debate to try it in a low or no cost option with a teaching opportunity for students. Hopefully this will expand policy debate and give schools other opportunities to compete for a state championship.

If you have any questions about the packet or other divisions, please let me know!

Basics

Platform –

We will be using the Zoom Room Manager (ZRM) model.

Registration, pairings, and ballots will be on Tabroom.com.

All events will take place live on Zoom. Tournament staff will facilitate the use of Zoom during the tournament.

There will be an open tabroom on Zoom.

If your school district is hostile towards Zoom, please reach out and contact me. I am happy to get on the phone with your district’s tech coordinator to make the case for an exception. 

Please consider me to be on-call 24/7 for any questions you have about the tournament both in the lead-up to the tournament and during the tournament.

**Depending on entry size/access issues, we may switch to NSDA campus.

No entry fees or limits

This tournament is meant to be 100% cost-free for schools in the Pacific Northwest/Rocky Mountain Region. There will also be no fees for teams experimenting with Policy Debate in the Packet division.

There will also be no limits on entrees per team, but you will be expected to provide judging for your entrees. Judges must plan to be available during the tournament. 

Judging Requirement

Debate: 2 rounds of judging per team

We will not charge fees but do expect you to cover your entries. We will be hiring tournament judges in addition to provide a high-quality debate experience. Judges should be prepared to disclose their decision and provide verbal feedback after the round.

If you cannot cover your entry you need to let the tournament director know, this is our most important expectation. Judges should have a tabroom account and write a paradigm on Tabroom.com describing how they judge.

Harassment & Discrimination Policy

All participants debate at the invitation of the Kent Denver according to its tournament rules and the rules Kent Denver holds generally for conduct of guests. Harassment and discrimination will not be tolerated. That includes respect for all our participants’ pronouns.

COVID

We recommend following your local guidelines/school guidelines for competing.

Tournament director contact information

Mike Bausch Tournament Director 

Kent Denver, Director of Speech and Debate

208-871-4486

mikebausch@gmail.com/mbausch@kentdenver.org

Competition Events & Awards

The purpose of this tournament is to help provide opportunities for policy debate and schools.

Open CX Division – varsity policy debate with no restrictions. 4 rounds and semifinals/an appropriate number of elimination rounds.

Novice CX Division – This division will be limited to students in their first or second year of policy debate and require use of one of the 4 NFHS case areas, no counterplans or Kritiks are allowed in the novice division.

The case areas for the NFHS cases are:

·       Substantially strengthen federal surveillance and standards for lead in drinking water

·       Substantially limit the use of hydraulic fracturing by energy companies in the United States.

·       Substantially strengthen federal standards for agriculture-related runoff into lakes and streams.

·       Substantially increase the protection of wetlands in the United States.

Packet CX Division – this division is a new debate opportunity. We encourage students of any age level who normally compete in other debate events and are interested in trying policy debate to enter this division. Students will be limited to the Agriculture Packet affirmative, and the set of negative arguments provided against it. Students will not be allowed to use arguments or evidence that is outside of the packet evidence set. A copy of the permitted packet files can be found here: packet division set.

Students in the novice and packet division will have 3 rounds of debate on Saturday 1/22. There will be two optional teaching sessions for the affirmative and negative packet arguments on Friday 1/21 during round 1 and round 2 of the open division. Any competitor or student of a competing school is welcome to attend the session and ask questions before the debates on Saturday.

Please contact the tournament director for more questions about this division and rules.

Awards

All debate elimination round participants will receive an award.

An appropriate number of speaker awards will be distributed in debate events.

Tournament Norms

Disclosure

We highly encourage argument disclosure and evidence-sharing in in policy debate. The schedule will include a time where students are require to check in before their debates and the affirmative should disclose their 1ac and advantages, or send the full text of the 1ac before the debate. The negative team should disclose prior negative arguments they have read.

Evidence Sharing

Similarly, we believe that in all debate events, sharing evidence before speeches creates better debates. To facilitate this, debaters can email each other the evidence they plan to read in their speech. In policy debate in particular, rigorously scrutinizing evidence is what sets this event apart. Evidence cannot be rigorously scrutinized if it cannot be viewed.

Schedule (Mountain Time)

Friday 1/21

8am-2:30pm Check in

3pm Pairings For Round 1 and Round 2 Released

3:15pm — Check In/Disclosure for R1

3:30pm — Start R1

4pm — Packet Aff Teach in/Q and A

5:45pm — Decision time R1

6:15pm — Check In/Disclosure R2

6:30pm – R2 Start Time

6:30pm — Packet Neg Teach in/Q and A

8:45pm — Decision time R2

Saturday 1/22

8:30 Pairings Open R3/Novice and Packet R1

8:45 Check In — Disclosure

9:00 R3 Start/Packet R1 Start

11:15 Decision Time R3/Packet R1

11:30 Pairings Open R4/Novice and Packet R2

11:45 — Check in/Disclosure

12:00 R4 Start/Packet R2 Start

2:15 Decision Time R4/Packet R2

2:45 Pairings/Flips for Open Semis/Novice and Packet R3 Pairings

3:30 Check in/Disclosure ASAP

3:15 Semis/Packet R3 Start

5:30 Decision Time Semis/Packet R3

5:45 Pairings/Flips CX Finals

6:30 CX finals Start

8:45 Decision Time

Awards, Ballots, and Results will be released on tabroom ASAP after each division concludes.