Dear Colleagues,

The Silicon Valley Urban Debate League (SVUDL) presents:

The John Lewis SVUDL Invitational, formerly known as the SCU Dempsey-Cronin (aka SCU 1).

The Silicon Valley Urban Debate League has taken ownership of the SCU Dempsey Cronin, and will be running an online Speech and Debate invitational to be held the weekend before Thanksgiving, from Nov 18-20. Members of the SCU Debate Society will be working with SVUDL to put together this tournament, and we invite you and your squads to join us.

All proceeds from this tournament will go to the Silicon Valley Urban Debate League, a local non-profit organization whose mission is to empower Silicon Valley students, regardless of their race or socioeconomic status, to reach their full potential to become professional and community leaders by teaching critical thinking and communication skills through speech and debate programming.

SVUDL is pleased to continue to honor the legacy of the late Congressman John Lewis by naming this Speech and Debate tournament after him. Born near Troy, Alabama in 1940, Congressman Lewis devoted his life to securing civil rights, fair and equal access to voting rights, and was a tireless soldier who literally and repeatedly risked his life in the movement against racial segregation and injustice.

We are also pleased to announce that we are again a NIETOC designated bid tournament for those interested in the National Individual Events Tournament of Champions. We are also designated as a bid tournament for the speech and semifinals bid in Public Forum for the Tournament of Champions, held by the University of Kentucky.

This will be a hybrid tournament, with all Speech events and Congress held in person at Silver Creek High School in San Jose, CA. All other Debate events (LD, PF, Parli, Policy) will be held online using the NSDA Campus platform.

All Debate formats will start Friday, November 18 this year. Speech events and Congress start Saturday, November 19.

Due to the hybrid nature of the tournament, students will not be allowed to double enter across Speech and Debate events. Congress will also not be allowed to double enter.

However, students are welcome to double enter in speech. All Speech events will be placed in 2 patterns. Students are allowed to enter up to 2 events per pattern, but no more than 3 events total.

All tournament registration will be on Tabroom.com. Information regarding online platform use for the tournament will be released in the coming weeks.

Please note that the schedule listed is tentative. Depending on the size of entry, the schedule may be adjusted.

If you have any questions regarding the tournament or registration, please email Tournament Director Mariel Cruz at cruznmariel@gmail.com

Please note, we may make adjustments to our tournament procedures to bring us more in line with other national tournaments. Coaches will be notified of any changes made as soon as they have been finalized. Any updates will also be posted here on Tabroom.

Deadlines

The system will accept new entries until Monday, November 14, 2022 at 8:00pm. Make drops and adds through Tabroom after that up until the tournament begins. However, changes or drops made after Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 8pm forfeit their entry fees. All space in debate and speech will be allocated on a first come, first served basis; register early!

TBA Entries

All TBA Entries will be waitlisted until names are entered. Any TBA entries without names after the registration deadline will be removed from the tournament.

Judging Requirements

Schools are not allowed to buy out of more than 50% of your judge commitment. Please see the list of fees for uncovered judge fees. Schools without sufficient judges may be asked to reduce their entry. If your school is not able to provide at least 75% of your judging commitment, please make judge requests early so that we can properly allocate judges for this.

Please note, hired judging is very limited. All hired judge requests must be made by November 11th. Requests will not be accepted after this date, and schools must provide their own judges after this date.

Schools will pay a judging penalty fee per speech slot, Congress entry, Lincoln Douglas/Duo Interp or debate team not covered by school judges. Please note, because we were required to hire several judges last year, judge hire fees have been increased this year, and hired judging is limited.

Debate Judges are committed through the elim rounds 1 and 2, and one round past where their school drops from competition. Speech Judges are obligated for all rounds on Saturday and Sunday, regardless if your students advance or not.

Judges are assumed to be experienced and prepared to judge their assigned events or debate formats.Jjudges must have properly linked Tabroom accounts for online ballot entry. School judges who fail to check in to their rounds when assigned may have their team fined the aforementioned penalties per round. Please contact us if you're unsure of your judging commitment, or have any other questions regarding judging.

Topics:

L/D Debate Topic: NSDA Nov/Dec topic

Policy Debate Topic: National topic on Emerging Technologies

Public Forum: NSDA November Public Forum Topic.

Parliamentary Debate: one topic will be provided for each round

Divisions

All Speech and Debate events will offer a novice and open division. We reserve the right to collapse divisions if entry size is too small for two separate divisions.

Novice is defined as a student’s first year of competition, or not advancing to an elimination round in your first two years of competition, regardless of debate format.

Patterns

Debate Pattern: Policy, Parliamentary, Public Forum and Lincoln-Douglas Debate - held online

Congress in one pattern - at Silver Creek High School

Speech Patterns - all speech will be held at Silver Creek High School

Pattern A - Impromptu, OPP, POI, OI (Declamation), Duo

Pattern B - DI, HI, Extemp, OO, Info

General Tournament Procedures

The tournament will consist of six preliminary debate rounds for varsity, five prelims debate rounds for novice, and the three preliminary rounds of varsity and open speech events. We reserve the right to combine divisions if the entry warrants.

Semifinals will be held in individual events with 50 or more entries or the discretion of the tournament director. Undersubscribed events may waive finals.

Tournament Caps and Waitlist

Due to the size of the tournament, we will be placing caps on the debate events. Each school will be allotted 4 entries per division per debate event. All entries over the caps will be waitlisted.

Entries may also be waitlisted if the tournament reaches capacity. Schools will be moved off the waitlist as space opens up. Schools that have not already taken up their allotted slots in each event will be moved first, and schools with completed judge entries will also be given preference. Remaining waitlisted entries will be moved on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Congress

Please designate the PO's with a 'po' for every ten entries via email to cruznmariel@gmail.com. Please note that Congress judges will be listed under IE's. Please enter Congress judges into the IE judge pool. Bills will be included in the official tournament invite, which will be posted on the tournament webpage on Tabroom.com a couple weeks prior to the start of the tournament.

We invite members of the community to submit legislation for the Congress tournament. Please email cruznmariel@gmail.com with your legislation. A finalized set of bills will be released in November.

Updates to Policy

In order to allow more teams the opportunity to participate in Policy debate, we will be adding a new division for Policy, called the “Rookie” division. This division will be similar to novice, except this division will have strict argument restrictions for teams competing in this division. Please see descriptions below to determine which division to register for.

Rookie - Eligible for all novice debaters, but students will only be allowed to run the following arguments:

Ban Gene Editing Affirmative

Ban Gene Editing Negative

Disinformation Affirmative

Disinformation Negative

China Focus DA

Russian Aggression DA

Topicality

The rookie division is a packet plus division. While students are limited in the arguments they may run, they can add evidence to supplement what is available in the provided packet.

Novice - Eligible for all novice debaters, any argument type will be allowed in this division.

Open - Eligible for all open/varsity debaters, any argument type will be allowed in this division.