Greetings from the Northwestern Debate Society,

We are excited to invite you to the 60th Owen L. Coon Memorial Debate Tournament at Northwestern University, taking place on our Evanston campus from Saturday, September 6th, through Monday, September 8th, 2025. This is a week earlier than we normally host due to classroom availability on campus; we anticipate that we will return to our normal date on the second weekend in September for 2026 and 2027.

Tournament Details

Location: Our current plan is to host all debates, including elims, on campus – we will know more about the distribution of the available rooms in late June and will update you accordingly.

Divisions: We anticipate offering Open and JV divisions and will try to add a Novice division if we have enough novice-eligible teams.

Format: The 2025 OLC will once again feature eight preliminary rounds and will break to at least a full double-octafinals in Open.

Hotel: We will not have a designated tournament hotel or a block of tournament reserved rooms this year. We encourage teams to book rooms early because there will some other events on campus, including a NU football game. However, there are a variety of reasonably priced hotel options in Evanston and nearby in Skokie. There are several hotels near O’Hare and in downtown Chicago that may also be suitable.

Participation

Everyone is strongly encouraged to participate in-person at the tournament, but we will accommodate remote teams as well.

We look forward to welcoming you in September! On behalf of the entire NU Debate Society and our alumni, I want to express how much we enjoy hosting you each year. We’re looking forward to an excellent weekend of competition this September.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly.

Sincerely,

Dr. Daniel J. Fitzmier

Director of Debate & Associate Professor of Instruction

School of Communication

Northwestern University