Welcome to the 9th Annual Harvard College World Schools Invitational

The tournament will be held March 22-24, 2024, in-person on Harvard’s campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We hope to see you there! The Google Docs version of what's below can be found here.

Our tournament offers:

High-Quality Judging: The majority of our judge pool is composed of former WSDC Champions, WSDC National team members, out-round WSDC judges, highly successful British Parliamentary collegiate debaters, and other members of the Harvard College Debating Union who come from highly successful domestic and international backgrounds.
High-Quality Competition: We frequently have multiple national teams attend our tournament as they prepare for the upcoming World Schools Debating Championship in the summer.

Some updates from previous years:

We will have a break to novice semis.

The eligibility requirements for novice status have changed (more below).

We will have 4 impromptu and 2 prepped rounds.

The tournament will be in the World Schools format. All rules and formats on tournament procedure will follow the WSDC handbook unless otherwise stated. Teams comprise 3-5 students, and students do not need to attend the same school/institution in order to be on the same team.

General eligibility:
• All speakers in a team must be 19 years of age or younger in March 2024.
• All speakers must neither be enrolled in a university or equivalent post-secondary learning institution nor be attending university varsity debating training in March 2024.
• An eligibility check will be done on each team interested in competing for a berth at HCWSI in the month prior to the event.

Novice eligibility:
• Has broken at fewer than two (ie. one or zero) World Schools or Parliamentary (British, American, Canadian, etc.) debate tournaments.
• Breaking is defined as advancing to elimination rounds. Please reach out if you would like further clarification on this.

Technology policy:
• Debaters should not be using their phones (other than to time their speeches) or laptops during prep or the round. For prepared rounds, they should print out any materials they would like to use.
• If you would like to request an exemption to this policy, e.g. for educational access arrangements , please reach out to harvardwst@gmail.com.

Details

Dates: March 22-24, 2024
Location: In-person at Harvard
Registration timeline: December 17, 2023 to 11:59pm EST on March 2, 2024
Fees
• Early bird (before 11:59pm EST on February 3, 2024): $160/student
• Regular: $175/student
Judge requirement: For n teams, the institutional judge requirement is n/2 rounded down, with a minimum of 1 judge per delegation. This means delegations of 1-3 teams will require 1 judge, delegations of 4-5 will require 2, and so on. A missing judge fee is applied at a rate of $100 per day for teams that fail to meet their judging obligation.

Registration

The tournament will run on Tabbycat. In order to register:
• Please fill out the Team Registration Form. This should be filled out separately for each team you would like to register.
• Institutional judges, please fill out this Institutional Judge Registration Form.

DO NOT REGISTER VIA TABROOM. REGISTRATIONS DONE VIA TABROOM WILL BE DISREGARDED.

Fees

In order for your spot to be confirmed at the tournament, we expect a deposit to be paid in full by March 18th, 2024. Each school’s deposit will be 25% of the overall fees they are expected to pay.

Payment options
Option 1 (preferred): Venmo
Option 2: Checks
Option 3: PayPal

Invoices including Venmo/Paypal handles and details on who to mail a check to will be emailed to coaches upon registration.

Independent Adjudicators

Applications to be an independent adjudicator are now open! Those wishing to apply should fill out this form as well as the judge test before February 17.

Contact

Please feel free to email the tournament directors, Jenna Hong and Shayna Leng, at harvardwst@gmail.com for any questions. For international attendees, we are happy to provide letters for visa purposes - please reach out for assistance.

Schedule

Prepared rounds are marked with a (P). Impromptu rounds are marked with an (I).

Dinner will be provided on Saturday, March 23th to all attendees. For other meals, Harvard Square provides ready access to lots of options for food, and the schedule gives participants a reasonable amount of time to get food.