Tournament Rules and Procedures

General Information

By competing at the Trevian Invitational, all coaches, judges, and competitors agree to abide by the rules of the tournament and directives of its personnel. Our goal is to provide and engaging and educational experience for all of those involved. In order to facilitate that, we need everyone to uphold certain norms and standards. This will make for a smooth functioning competition throughout the weekend. 

School & Team Entries

Students must compete on behalf of a singular high school institution. Teams representing a private entity (aka "independent entries") that is not a school (i.e. any for profit entity, league, consortium, etc.) and/or are comprised of students from different school institutions (hybrids) will not be permitted to compete. We do not accept middle school entries. In an ideal world, we would allow every student to debate. However, in order to keep the tournament in compliance with the rules of regional states education officials we must exclude independent entries and middle school competitors.

Please note that we do not consider schools districts to be singular school institutions. Several districts are made up of different schools. Therefore, even if students receive diplomas from the same district, if team members are not enrolled at the same institution then they will not be eligible for entry.

Each student must be enrolled and in good standing with their respective school institution.

Tournament registration must reflect the actual names of the students in accordance with their school administration. False names, symbols, etc. that the school would not know the student by will not be permitted. For example, if a student's name is Andrew Jeffrey Smith, but is enrolled as "AJ Smith" for the purposes of the tournament, then this would be acceptable if that student's school administration knew them as such. However, if that same student registered for the tournament as "X," then that would not be acceptable as the school administration would not know the student as such. Our tournament and school administration consider this important for ensuring the safety of all students. It is also necessary for us to supply information (when needed) to the National Speech and Debate Association, the National Debate Coaches Association, and the Tournament of Champions committee.

School Chaperone 

The tournament's preference is that a school employee "accompanies" their institution's students to the competition. However, we understand that coaches play different roles with their teams. Each team must have an adult chaperone, who is known to the school, available for any tournament related communication.

Mutually Preferred Judging and Obligations

Mutually preferred judging only works if all available judges are available. The tournament will do it's best to accommodate round requests, but more and more judges are limiting their availability now that tournaments have moved online. The tournament reserves the right to place judges in the best interest of the competitors and may not be able to accommodate every request for rounds off. 

Programs are required to supply 3 rounds of preliminary judging for each of their teams competing in the tournament. A limited amount of rounds are available for hire. 

Programs who fail to provide judging for required elimination rounds may have their team's preferences deactivated for the remainder of the tournament and face fines. 

Judges may only place themselves in the elimination round judge pool if they are registered for a minimum of 1 preliminary round.

All judges are obligated for the double-octofinal round. All judges are obligated one round past their program’s elimination from the tournament.

Fines: Unfortunately, due to past experiences with missing judges or judge availability the tournament will be instituting a fine for missed obligations. Judges who miss any preliminary or elimination round commitments will cause their program to incur a $75 fine per round missed.

Judges who indicate that they are fulfilling a full commitment (6 debates) may not indicate that they are unavailable for particular rounds in their judge notes. If a judge indicates that they are fulfilling a full commitment, but then indicates that they are unavailable for particular rounds, then the tournament will fine that judge’s program $75 per round that the judge is unavailable.

Every judge must have a judge philosophy posted under the “paradigm” section of their Tabroom account. It is the responsibility of every program to ensure that their judges have a philosophy posted. If a program’s judge does not have a philosophy posted, then that program’s judge preferences will be deactivated for the tournament. We will do our best to inform programs if their judges do not have judge philosophies, but schools should hold themselves accountable for their program's judging and confirm that these individuals have posted philosophies. 

Lastly, programs that have not fulfilled their judging obligation will be unable to take part in the mutual preference system. Tabroom will not allow you to fill out a judge preference sheet unless your commitment has been met.

Policy Format

The tournament will follow an 8-3-5 format with 8 minutes of preparation time per team. 

The resolution for the Open Policy division is, "Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its security cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in one or more of the following areas: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cyber security." 

The varsity division will contain six preliminary debates and will break to double-octofinals. 

Decision times will be used in preliminary rounds.

Congressional Debate Format

Congress will hold two preliminary sessions on Saturday, October 8th with one elimination round session to follow.