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 - Speech events

4:00 PM Round 1

5:30PM Round 2

7:30 PM Round 3

Saturday - Congress and debate events

8:00 AM Round 1 / Congress Session 1

9:30 AM Round 2

10:00 AM Congress Session 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 $15 per day. 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 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, DI, DUO and POI), and informative. SpAr will also be Friday.

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

Rules

Events will follow norms and rules specified by the UHSAA and NSDA.

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 United States ought to guarantee the right to housing

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

PF topic: The United States federal government should substantially increase its military presence in the Arctic

Policy topic: Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase fiscal redistribution in the United States by adopting a federal jobs guarantee, expanding Social Security, and/or providing a basic income

Extemp topics: A list of questions will be uploaded shortly. Extempers can expect to be presented three random topics from each list. The topics released for this tournament will be created by the tournament director.

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

Session 1:

A Resolution to Import Raw Materials for Bioplastics from Southeast Asia

A Bill to Exempt Teachers from Income Tax

A Bill to Repeal the Authority of the President to Waiver the Prohibition on Testing Biological and Chemical Weapons

A Bill to Ban Research into Artificial Intelligence

A Bill to Ban Confederate Flags throughout the United States

A Resolution to Amend the Constitution to End Corporate Election Spending

Session 2:

A Bill to Bolster the Manufacturing of Semiconductors

A Bill to Increase Juvenile Rights

A Bill to Ban High Fructose Corn Syrup

A Bill to Increase Access to Menstrual Care Products

A Bill to Ban Unreasonable Government Subsidies

Double Entry

Double entry is permitted in speech events on Friday.

Judges

Varsity debaters may judge.