Invitation

FALL AT THE BEACH – 2020

WELCOME TO THE FALL AT THE BEACH TOURNAMENT!!

HELLO ALL!

The faculty, staff, students, administration, and alumni of the California State University, Long Beach cordially invites you to attend Fall at the Beach, hosted by the California State University Long Beach’s “Beach Forensics” Program on Friday November 6–Sunday November 8, 2020. Policy, Parliamentary (NPDA/NPTE), and IEs will be registered on Tabroom.com. GOOOO BEACH!

VIRTUAL CAMPUS INFORMATION

LIABILITY FORMS: All participants at the Fall at the Beach Tournament are required to fill out and complete a CSU Liability Form. Forms should be submitted for all attendees (including judges/coaches) at registration. Any individual who has not turned in a liability form at the beginning of the first round of competition will be administratively removed from the tournament.

TOURNAMENT COMPETITION SOFTWARE: Participants at the Fall at the Beach Tournament will compete/judge on the NSDA Campus platform. All participants are required to have a Tabroom.com account that is linked with their respective school in advance of the tournament. A Zoom room will be available as a judge’s lounge for IEs, NPDA/NPTE, and Policy. 

POLICY DEBATE

FORMAT

Novice, Junior and Open debate. CEDA eligibility rules apply, but we may collapse novice and junior based on the number of entrants. We strongly prefer to avoid collapsing divisions and will only do so if it is the difference between having enough debates for preliminary rounds to occur. Hybrids teams are welcome, but the schools are responsible for negotiating judging and payment arrangements in advance.

We will be using the 2020-2021 CEDA/NDT resolution for policy debate:

“Resolved: The United States Federal Government should reduce its alliance commitments with Japan, the Republic of Korea, North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states, and/or the Republic of the Philippines, by at least substantially limiting the conditions under which its defense pact can be activated.” 

Time limits are 9-3-6 with 10 minutes of prep time.  Judges should pick one winning team in each debate and use a 30-point speaker scale with decimals in tenths of a point – no ties allowed.

We encourage participating teams and schools in policy debate to contribute to http://opencaselist.paperlessdebate.com/ and provide updated information about their most recent affirmative and negative positions to be more consistent with community norms.

REQUIREMENT FORMS 

All participants MUST fill out a liability form due at registration. This form is uploaded on the right under information.

FEES:

Uncovered teams will be responsible for a fee of $150.00. We will accept credit card payments via the online payment portal provided and institutional checks. ALL fees must be paid before competition proceeds. ALL checks must be made payable to “CSU Long Beach Forensics.” [Mail to Deven Cooper at: ]

JUDGING REQUIREMENTS:

One team requires four rounds of judging commitment, and two teams require 6 rounds of judging commitment. Each school is expected to provide judges to accompany their teams or hire them. Every judge entered must have a judging philosophy posted on tabroom.com. All hired judging should occur through the tabroom.com judge hiring function. All judges are committed through the first elimination debate on Sunday, or one round beyond which their team is eliminated. Judges should be able to cover a school's commitment despite potential constraints. 

 JUDGE PREFERENCE:

We will use ordinal judge preferences for preliminary and elimination debate rounds in policy debate.  Preferences will be available on Tabroom.com between November 3 and November 5 at 1PM (PST).  Preferences will be due no later than 5:00 PM. (PST) on Thursday November 5, 2020.  

 JUDGE DECISION REQUIREMENTS:

All judges at the tournament are expected to render a decision within 2 hours and 15 minutes of the scheduled start time for preliminary debates and within 2 hours and 30 minutes of the scheduled start time for an elimination debate.  Failure to abide by the time limit will result in the tab room flipping a coin to decide the winner the round.  All judges must render a decision where they indicate one, and only one, team that won the round. Judges’ ballots not adhering to this rule will be corrected by the tab room, flipping a coin to determine the winner.

SCHEDULE OF POLICY EVENT: 

Friday, Nov 6, 2020

1:30 – 2:30 Registration (ALL Payments DUE)

3:00 Release pairings Released

4:00 Round 1 (pre-set) 

6:30 Round 2 (pre-set)

Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020

9:00 Release pairings

10:00 Round 3

12:30 Round 4

2:30 Lunch Break

3:30 Round 5

5:45 First elimination pairing released

6:30 First Elimination Round

Sunday, Nov. 6, 2020

9:00 Second Elimination pairing released

9:45 Second Elimination round

12:30 Awards

1:30 Third Elimination round

4:30 Fourth Elimination Round if needed

Other rounds to follow as appropriate

NPDA/NPTE PARLI DEBATE 

Fall at the Beach offers preliminary 5 rounds of novice and open NPDA/NPTE parliamentary debate. All competitors who meet NPDA eligibility standards are welcome to compete in the open division, regardless of experience level. We will break teams with a 4-2 record or better up to 50% of the competition field. Topics will be announced at a central location and released online, and teams will have 20 minutes to prepare before the round. Pairings will be released moments before the topic announce in order to maximize time efficiency.

FEES: Uncovered teams will be $150. We will accept credit card payments via the online payment portal provided and institutional checks, but NO personal checks. ALL fees must be paid before competition proceeds. If a fee reduction is needed contact Deven (Devenc325@gmail.com). ALL checks must be made payable to “CSU Long Beach Forensics.” [Mail to Deven Cooper at: ]

ENTRY PROCEDURE: We will use www.tabroom.com for NPDA/NPTE entries. Entries must be completed by 5:00 PM PST on November 3, 2020. Drops and name changes (but not adds) can be entered no later than 6:00 PM PST on November 5, 2020. Any other accommodations can be made contacting Deven. NPDA debate regulations will be in effect for relevant events, unless otherwise specified in this invitation. Hybrid debate teams will be accepted for NPDA.

DIVISIONS: If there are at least 25 entries per division, “Fall at The Beach” will offer Novice and Open Divisions. Division rules will follow NPDA guidelines, where eligibility is determined based on the partner with the most experience and a semester means the student has competed in at least three tournaments of any style of debate. We will have 5 preliminary rounds and 3 elimination rounds or however many are needed based on size.

JUDGING: One judge will cover 4 rounds of NPDA/NPTE debate. If you need to hire judges, please make those accommodations early on. We will open the judge hire exchange if you need to buy rounds from folks. If not, please bring sufficient judges to cover your entries. Judges must have an undergraduate degree or be out of competitive eligibility. Judges are committed for one full elimination round beyond the round in which their school is eliminated. We request that all critics upload a philosophy on tabroom.com.

JUDGE INSTRUCTIONS: Judges are encouraged to disclose only after they have entered their ballot on Tabroom.com. Delays caused by coaches or judges may, at the Tournament Directors’ discretion, result in penalties to that school’s teams including fines and/or removal from the tournament. We don’t want to do it, so don’t put us in a position where we would have to do it. Judges’ ballots must assign one winner and one loser in every debate. The judge must assign ordinal speaker ranks with corresponding speaker points between 1 and 30. Judges/schools who fail to comply will be removed from the tournament and fined for unpaid rounds of judging.

 Decisions must complete within 18 minutes of the final speech. 

ARRIVAL, START OF DEBATES PREPARATION, AND TRANSIT TIME: Preparation time for the 2020 “Fall at the Beach” Tournament will be 20 minutes following the announcement of the topic. This timing schedule includes time to locate and enter virtual competition rooms. It is the responsibility of each team to familiarize themselves with NSDA Campus before rounds begin. An inability to locate virtual competition rooms will not be accepted as an excuse for late arrival to rounds. Prep time will be adjusted if virtual logistics necessitate it and the tournament will be notified by the Tournament Directors of any changes prior to topic announcement. If you encounter a technology issue stemming from Tabroom.com, please notify tournament staff immediately.

PENALTIES FOR LATENESS: At the expiration of preparation time, the judge will begin a timer. The team(s) who is/are not present will have the total of that time deducted from the speaking time of their first speech. If the late team(s) is/are not present by the expiration of their first speech’s total time, they will receive a forfeit with zero speaker points. If neither team is present by 8 minutes after prep time has expired, both shall be forfeited and both teams shall receive 0 speaker points. Refusal by a judge to do this will result in the removal of the judge from the judging pool and an uncovered judge fee will be assessed to the team who the judge is representing. The judge does NOT have discretion about whether to enforce this rule and their decision may be overturned by the Tournament Director if they refuse to enforce it. If a judge refuses to enforce this rule, the affected team should contact the tab room immediately. Furthermore, judges are also bound by the prep clock and must arrive at their debates on time. This means that judges must also walk during prep time and must NOT continue to prep until the end of prep time and then walk to their round.

PRELIM ROUNDS:  The computer will randomly match Rounds 1 and 2. Round three will be power-matched high-high; all subsequent rounds will be power-matched high-low.

ELIM ROUNDS: We will make every effort to advance half the competitive field in Open Debate. If needed, a double octafinal round will be held. Advancement to and seeding in elimination rounds will be first based upon record, followed by adjusted speaker points, then total speaker points, next by opposition record, and finally by ZScore.  In elimination rounds, brackets will NOT be broken.  We will attempt to clear all winning records in Open and Novice debate as practical, up to half the competitive field.

NPDA DEBATE AWARDS: We will offer awards for every team advancing to elimination rounds and will give awards to the top 10 speakers in each division. Speaker points will be determined using adjusted points, total points, double adjusted points, and judge variance (in that order). We will not do sweepstakes in the debate categories.

PARLI SCHEDULE:

FRIDAY, Nov. 6, 2020

REGISTRATION 12:00

1:00                  Topic Announced: Round 1

1:25-2:35         Round One NPDA Debate

2:45                   Topic Announced: Round 2

3:10-4:20         Round Two NPDA Debate

4:30-5:30        Dinner Break

5:35                   Topic Announced: Round 3

6:00-7:15         Round Three NPDA Debate 

SATURDAY,  Nov. 5, 2020

9:30                 Topic Announced: Round 4

9:55- 10:00      Round Four NPDA Debate

10:10                 Topic Announced: Round 5

10:35-11:45     Round Five NPDA Debate

11:50                 Topic Announced: Elim 1

12:20- 1:30       Elim 1 NPDA Debate

LUNCH BREAK / AWARDS 1:30- 2:40

2:45                 Topic Announced: Elim 2

3:05- 4:15        Elim 2 NPDA Debate

DINNER BREAK 4:15-5:00

5:10                   Topic Announced: Elim 3

5:35- 6:50        Elim 3 NPDA Debate

7:00                    Topic Announced: Elim 4

7:25- 9:00         Elim 4 NPDA Debate

If necessary:

9:00                    Topic Announced: Elim 5

9:25-10:45         Elim 5 NPDA Debate

SPEECH/INDIVIDUAL EVENTS

Rules: We will be hosting a swing of 1-day, complete individual events tournaments. Each day we will offer all 11 of the IE events offered at AFA and NFA, with the exception of Duo Interpretation. We will default to all AFA rules for those events; please refer to their bylaws for specifics.

Events: We will offer the following event spread across the following conflict patterns:

Pattern A: Extemp, Informative, After Dinner Speaking, Prose, Poetry

Pattern B: Impromptu, Persuasion, Comm. Analysis, Dramatic, POI

Divisions: We will offer both Open and Novice as long as there are 12 or more entries in a division. If an event does not have at least 12 entries in each division, we will collapse divisions and offer awards to the top Novice competitor in each Open division during awards.

Elimination Rounds:  Any event with 7 contestants or fewer will not have a final round, but a third preliminary round to determine placement.  For events with more than 7 competitors, a final round will be held. Any event with more than 45 entries will advance to semifinals.

Advancing to Elimination Rounds:  No more than half of the field will be advanced to finals (unless extremely rare/improbable case of unbreakable ties).  Students will be rank ordered first by lowest cumulative rankings, then by highest cumulative rate, then by judge’s preference, then by highest reciprocal score (decimal conversion).  All attempts will be made to make a clean break (by cumulative rankings).

I.Es Schedule

SATURDAY, Nov. 5, 2020

8:00                 Extemp Draw; Speak at 8:30

8:15-9:15         Round One: Pattern A Events

9:30-10:30       Round One: Pattern B Events

10:45-11:45     Round Two: Pattern B Events

11:45-12:30    LUNCH BREAK

12:30               Extemp Draw; Speak at 1:00

12:45-1:45       Round Two: Pattern A Events

2:30-3:45         Finals: Pattern B Events

4:00                 Extemp Draw (Finals); Speak at 4:30

4:00 – 5:15      Finals: Pattern A Events        

6:00 P.M.        AWARDS CEREMONY ASAP

SUNDAY, Nov. 6, 2020

8:00                 Extemp Draw; Speak at 8:30

8:15-9:15         Round One: Pattern A Events

9:30-10:30       Round One: Pattern B Events

10:45-11:45     Round Two: Pattern B Events

11:45-12:30    LUNCH BREAK

12:30               Extemp Draw; Speak at 1:00

12:45-1:45       Round Two: Pattern A Events

2:30-3:45         Finals: Pattern B Events

4:00                 Extemp Draw (Finals); Speak at 4:30

4:00 – 5:15      Finals: Pattern A Events        

6:00 P.M.        AWARDS CEREMONY ASAP