Judges

JUDGES:

Qualified judges are an essential component of any tournament. A qualified judge is an individual who has either graduated from high school with forensics competition experience or who has already had at least one year of forensics judging experience. High school students are limited to judging novice divisions in LD and Policy. Please list judges by full name when entering the tournament. Judge names should remain consistent throughout the tournament. It is each school's responsibility to furnish an adequate number of judges. In general, the same judge cannot cover both debate and individual events, since they are run simultaneously. The one exception to this: CONGRESS JUDGES CAN ALSO JUDGE SPEECH EVENTS. Please indicate if your judges will cover your Policy, LD, PFD, IE or Congress entries to avoid any confusion.

In Policy and LD debate, we encourage all judges to reveal their decisions to the students after the debate. We will be posting results after each round. ALL judges for these events must submit a philosophy to judgephilosophies.wikispaces.com. Several days before the tournament, judge preference sheets will be made available for all teams in Varsity LD and TOC Policy debate on tabroom.com. These should be submitted no later than 5pm January 4^th.

In individual events, each participating institution is required to furnish one qualified judge for every events (5) individual entry slots, or fraction thereof. This is not a per student requirement, but per entry slot. All individual events judges will be expected to be available through the finals of individual events. Speech events take place only Friday and Saturday.

For Policy one judge is required for every two debate teams entered, or fraction thereof. In Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum, one judge is required for every three entries, or fraction thereof. For Congressional Debate, one judge is required for every 5 congresspersons entered, or fraction thereof. All debate judges will be expected to be available through the first elimination round. Judges affiliated with teams in elimination rounds must be available for the round beyond their teams’ elimination. All judges should inform the tab staff before departing.

Additionally, if you are traveling within the state of Arizona, we ask that you cover all of your slots. Because of the size of the tournament, we desperately need the help of the program directors to ensure that all judges affiliated with their school pick up their ballots each round. Judges for all events are asked to check-in at the ballot table before the first round.

This year, we will no longer be asking for a judge deposit. Instead, we will be charging $20 per missed ballot. No students from a school with missed ballots will be allowed to compete in elimination rounds until their schools missed ballot fees are paid. Please impress upon your judges the significance of picking up their ballots on time.

Since the ASU judging pool is limited, we urge you to find your own judges. We may not be able to accept very large entries not covered by qualified judges. In order to count as one judge, each judge must be available for more the entire tournament schedule. Judges who are only available for a smaller part of the time, although welcome, will be considered one-half of a judge for the purposes of fee tabulation. Finally, please do not list Arizona State University Forensics members or coaches as your judges. They are already committed to running the tournament!