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The Debate Union at UCLA welcomes you to the 2024 UCLA Speech & Debate Invitational! This tournament will be held synchronously online through NSDA Campus.

Institutions can receive a discount for referring other schools to this tournament. See the referral tab on the right for details.

The schedule, as well as the tournament invitation with all relevant information, are available through the tabs on the right.

To make sure you get the latest updates, alerts and reminders about the UCLA Invitational, add yourself to our email list here: subscribepage.io/debateunionatucla

If you have any questions, please contact the tournament staff listed at the right. With any email communications, please also include debateunion@g.ucla.edu.

Our full invitation is also copied below, for your convenience.

The Debate Union at UCLA is pleased to invite you to the 2024 UCLA Invitational, which will be held online via Tabroom NSDA Campus from Saturday, November 16, to Sunday, November 17.

This competition is held by the Debate Union at UCLA, and is not hosted by or affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, itself.

Contact Information

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact any of our tournament staff:

Ellena Kim (Captain) : ellenakim0806@gmail.com

Thej Mallu (Captain) : thejmallu@ucla.edu

Cayden Pocrass (Tournament Director) : cayrp9@ucla.edu

Alba Borrego Pablos (Equity Officer) : borregoalba8@gmail.com

In any email communications, please CC/Bcc debateunion@g.ucla.edu

Logistics

Throughout the tournament, please refer to the live docs for updated information. The schedule, which may change on the day of the tournament if there are unforeseen delays, can be found here. The Parliamentary Debate topics will be posted on this live doc on the day of the tournament, and topic areas will be posted on this document approximately two weeks before the tournament. All events will be using the NSDA topics for November-December 2024, when the tournament will take place.

All debating and judging will happen exclusively online and remotely on NSDA Campus, and all debate and speech events will be synchronous.

We will offer Novice and Open divisions in all events. If an event does not have a sufficient number of entries, the Novice and Open divisions may be combined, or the event may be canceled altogether. Individual rounds, including elimination rounds, may be cut from certain events if the number of entries is low, or if time does not permit.

Initially, all entries will be waitlisted, then approved by tournament staff as judging requirements and registration fees are fulfilled.

Important Dates

• Registration Opens: 8/9/2024, 7:00 AM PST

• Registration Closes: 11/13/2024, 11:55 PM PST

• Judges Due: 11/14/2024, 11:55 PM PST

• Payment Received/Drop Deadline: 11/14/2024, 11:55 PM PST

• Tournament Dates: 11/16/2024-11/17/2024

Schedule

Tournament Schedule 11/16-11/17

In addition to rounds, we will host information sessions with current Debate Union at UCLA travel team members for any interested participants to learn about UCLA, British Parliamentary and advice for adjusting to collegiate debate.

Events

All events below have both a Novice and Open division, and can be seen on our Tabroom page.

• Debate:

• Public Forum

• Lincoln Douglas

• Parliamentary

• Policy

• Speech:

• Original Oratory

• Original Advocacy

• Informative

• Dramatic Interpretation

• Humorous Interpretation

• Duo Interpretation

• Impromptu

• US Extemp

• International Extemporaneous

Depending on the number of entries, some events may have their Open and Novice divisions combined, or be canceled before the day of the tournament.

Novice Status

Competitors are eligible to compete in novice divisions if they are in their first school year of speech or debate, or if they are not yet in secondary school.

• Middle school experience does count for students entering their first year of high school, so a student who competed as a middle schooler in the prior school year will not be eligible for novice status in their first year of high school.

• A student who competes in a tournament in the current school year (i.e. in September) will retain novice status if they have not competed in the school year prior.

• For our purposes, a school year lasts from the first day of August through the last day of July.

• A secondary school student who competes in a tournament on July 31st, 2024 or prior will not be eligible for novice status.

• A secondary school student who competes in 10,000 tournaments between August 1st, 2024 and November 15th, 2024, but who has not competed in any tournaments July 31st, 2024 or prior will be eligible for novice status.

• Prior school-year competition includes middle school competitions, as well as competitions in other debate or speech events.

• An experienced policy debater with no speech experience for example, would be a novice in any speech event, but would need to enter the open category in any debate event, including debate events they had never done before.

• We define secondary school as the last four years of schooling a student receives prior to them reaching minimum school leaving age and graduating from secondary school, as defined in the laws of their country.

• Any students who are not in their last four school years of non-collegiate (collegiate including trade schools, apprenticeships, universities and community colleges among other institutions) education are considered “middle-schoolers” for the purposes of this tournament.

• All middle-schoolers are eligible for novice status regardless of their level of competitive experience.

• A middle-schooler who by some great effort has managed to accumulate 12 years of competitive experience and 100,000 first-place tournament wins will still be eligible for novice status at this tournament.

Double Entry Policy

Double entry in two speech events, or a speech event and a debate event, is technically permitted. However, it is the competitor’s responsibility to manage their rounds should they double enter.

Judges will be informed that if they have a double-entered participant, the participant should go first if possible. Double entered participants may enter a speech round later than the start time due to another event. However, it is not permitted for a double entered participant to enter a debate round late due to another event, as this will cause tournament-wide delays.

Independent Entries

We welcome all independent entries to this tournament! As long as you have an adult (guardian, teacher, principal, etc.) allowing you to compete, you should be able to compete as an independent entry.

Independent entries are those who

1. Belong to a speech and debate program not overseen by an adult supervisor

Or:

1. Are entering as representatives of a school/speech and debate program, but are not being entered by their coach/adult supervisor.

In the case of 1), participants must have their parents/adult guardians submit a form stating that their student has their full permission to participate in this tournament. In the case of 2), students must have their coach (or the teacher overseeing their speech and debate program) or their principal, submit a form stating that the students have their permission to enter this tournament as representatives of their school.

The form for adult approval of independent entries can be found here. Any and all adults who submits a form on behalf of a competitor must be listed as an “adult contact” with the same contact information as in the adult approval form when the student registers on tabroom. An adult contact is mandatory for all registrations.

Payment Information

Please send all payments through PayPal to @DebateUnionAtUCLA. Please either write your school name in the Messages section, or send an email to Captain Ellena Kim (see email address above) stating your school and the PayPal account name you have used to make your payment.

If you require a different method of payment, please contact Captain Ellena Kim for more assistance.

Fees/Fines

• School Fee: $0 (No School/Academy/Independent Entry Fee!)

• Entry fees

• LD: $40

• PF $55

• Parli: $40

• Policy: $55

• Speech (excluding Duo): $20

• Duo: $30

• Drop fees after the deadline: $20 per entry

• Judge fees: $100 per uncovered judge

• Additionally, a failure of a judge to disclose a necessary conflict will result in a fine of $100 to the affiliated institution.

For students who are entered under a UDL program or demonstrate similar financial need, the entry fee will be reduced to $5 per entry. However, every entry will be subject to any fees related to uncovered judges or late drops. If this applies to you, please contact tournament staff.

We are also offering a 1% discount for each entry referred to this tournament, up to ten entries. When a school emails us the name of the school that referred them, the school that referred them gets a 1% discount applied to all of their entry fees for each entry from the school that emails us. The total discount any school can receive is 10% off of the cost of their entry fees, not including fines and hired judging fees. More information can be found under the referral discount section of the tabroom website. Spread the word!

Judge Information

Every institution must provide one judge for every 2 debate entries, or for every 4 speech entries. Failure to procure the necessary number of judges will result in a fine of $100 per uncovered judge. If any institution has an additional number of qualified judges available, they can fill out the application to be a hired judge here.

Although forensics experience is not required, judges should be proficient in English and meet some minimum qualifications. A qualified judge understands the activity and is either experienced sitting in the back of the room with a ballot or flow pad, has been carefully trained by the team they are accompanying, or will attend one of our online judge trainings. A qualified judge knows how to assign ranks or wins/losses, speaker points, and knows how to fill out a ballot. High school seniors 18 years or older will be accepted provided that they have competitive and/or judging experience.

Our tournament is committed both to equal access to debate as an activity and to high quality adjudication and feedback. We outline standards for judge accreditation below, but if your school cannot field judges that meet those requirements or provide alternate training, we will be offering online judge training Thursday and Friday before the tournament. These interactive training sessions will introduce judges to the events they will be adjudicating, instruct them on judging standards, note-taking and ballot completion, and cover the common pitfalls that new judges often face. Attendance is not required for experienced judges, but they may attend as well, and attendance is taken for new and unaccredited judges. The two trainings will cover the same material, judges only need to attend one training. Notes from the training will be available on tabroom as a reference for judges during the tournament.

To encourage accurate calls and quality feedback, judges new to judging will be required to achieve Level 2, NSDA Judge Accreditation in the events our tournament offers by completing the NSDA judge trainings. Judges should set aside two hours, spread out over the course of the weeks running up to the tournament to complete these trainings. Judges who fail to achieve judge accreditation or receive alternate training before the tournament begins will be dropped from the draw, and their school will be fined as if they had entered no judge at all.

Judges are required to judge one round past the round in which all of their school’s competitors have been eliminated. If your school’s last competitor was eliminated in octofinals, you are still required to judge quarterfinals. Judges who leave the tournament before the last round they are required to judge will result in a fine for their school.

The Debate Union at UCLA reserves the right to adjust speaker scores below 80 points for speech and 24 points for debate. Judges giving scores below 80 points for speech and 24 points for debate should be ready to explain why they gave that score (i.e. egregious behavior, flagrant rule violations)

• A 23/79 or lower point speaker might be someone who targets their competitors with derogatory language and personal insults, refuses to abide by the speech time limits, interrupts their opponent’s speeches, brazenly and remorselessly fabricates facts, delivers a gibberish speech that is impossible to understand, and generally acts outside the bounds of acceptable behavior for their event. Don’t give 23/79 points or lower if the competitor is rude but not egregious, give a severely incomplete, difficult to follow, or illogical speech, or for being too nervous to fill their allotted speaking time. You should almost never need to give a score below 23/79 points. For this tournament’s purposes, treat 24/80 points as 0 points. Giving a speaker 2 points in public forum for example, would be the equivalent of giving them -22 points. Coaches should strongly emphasize the importance of abiding by the speaker point scale.

In order to maintain a fair and equitable competition, judges must disclose any and all conflicts on Tabroom prior to the tournament. Conflicts include:

• Competitors from the same institution as them (including any past institutions, such as an alma mater)

• Competitors whom the judge knows personally

• Competitors whom the judge is currently coaching, or has coached in the past

• Competitors whom the judge will not be able to consider impartially for any reason (i.e. due to past judging experience, personal experience, etc.)

If it is discovered after rounds begin that a judge purposefully did not disclose a necessary conflict, a fine of $300 will be charged to the institution which the judge is affiliated with.

Judges are encouraged to post a paradigm on Tabroom, if they have not done so already.

Equity Policies

Matters such as unprofessional conduct or disputes over results should be reported to the tournament’s Equity Officer (see contact information above), and will be considered by the Equity Officer, the Captains, and the Tournament Director.

To anonymously report an equity violation, please use this form: https://forms.gle/38jfRaiEwacV4JXm9

Code of Conduct

All debaters should conduct themselves in a respectful and professional manner, keeping in mind that they are representing their teams and schools. Any disrespectful or harmful behavior towards other competitors or judges will not be tolerated and will be grounds for disqualification from the tournament. Dishonest behavior, such as internet usage during a debate round (not including the 20 minutes of open prep for Parliamentary Debate before the round), will also be grounds for disqualification.

Our full equity policy can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gvSNBAbu_llwJmNwsShUK4fgAIHoVnmEU8hYLcXJ1xQ/edit?usp=sharing

Email Permissions

By signing up for this tournament, you consent to receive occasional emails from the Debate Union at UCLA about this tournament and upcoming tournaments, opportunities and resources for debaters to improve.