Judge Instructions

Hello judges,

The NYDL championship is the most challenging tournament our students have ever competed in, and the most challenging tournament we have attempted as organizers. We appreciate your help in giving students high-quality decisions that repay their hard work, and in making this event run smoothly by attending to our procedures.

How to prepare:

1. All judges must be trained. If you have not been trained, there will be a final opportunity at 6pm on Friday. Contact us in advance to let us know if you need this, otherwise we will assume no one is coming, and the session will not happen.

2. Make sure your computer works with NSDA campus by entering the test room at campus.speechanddebate.org/

3. All judge training materials can be found here.

Special instructions

1. About half of you will be asked to return on Sunday. We will send out this list on Saturday evening.

2. On Sunday, students will have a choice of three topics each round. When they get to the room, conduct a coin toss. The winner may either choose the topic or choose their side, but not both. The topic is always chosen before sides are chosen.

3. Once the topic and sides are chosen, give students 20 minutes to prepare, then start the round.

4. On Sunday, you will judge on a panel of three. Make your decision alone, and submit it before discussing the round with anyone.

5. Only after all three judges have submitted their electronic ballots, they should announce their decisions. Do give feedback, but keep it shorter than usual to compensate for the fact that there are three judges instead of one. If another judge has already said exactly what you were thinking, it is alright to just say so.

Procedures for the day of the tournament

Stay up-to-date by following the live doc.

1. Find your ballot and virtual room: On tabroom.com, click on your email address in the top right corner, then in the sidebar, under the “Judging” section, click “Current ballots and panels”. This will give you a blue button for your room and a green button for your ballot. These will only be visible when you are actively assigned to judge an upcoming debate.

2. Only when all debaters arrive, press the green “Start Round” button. Timing is important. The tournament staff can see whether you have pushed the button, so pushing it is your way of signalling to us that all debaters are present, and not pushing it is your way of signalling that there is a problem.

3. If you are still missing students five minutes after the posted start time and you have not already spoken with Evan or Nick, text 917 579 1834 or 203 810 7112.

4. At the end of the debate, make your decision and submit it before you talk to the students. This small step will help keep the tournament on time. You can add written feedback to your ballot after it is submitted, so please submit the decision and speaker scores first.

5. Throughout the day, please watch your email for messages from the administrators.

6. If you do not see any ballot assigned, come to the judge lounge. We will ask you to wait until we are certain that all rounds have started, and then send you on your way. We do this because we often have to make one or two last-minute judge swaps.

7. Recall the procedure for scoring teams of two:

-Give a single, overall score to the student who speaks twice.

-Your ballot will list a third student named "Placeholder". Simply give them a speaker score that is the average of the scores you gave to the two real debaters. For decimals, round up to the nearest whole number. For example, if there is a two person team, Alice and Bob, and Alice gets a 76 and Bob gets a 74, then on your ballot give Placeholder a 75.

Thank you for judging!