Judge Requirements

COMMITMENT

Schools are required to provide one judge for every three debaters or fraction thereof.

In Novice and Open, all schools are required to provide judges through the first FULL elimination round or one round beyond the elimination of their competitors, whichever comes later.

In the TOC division, all schools are required to provide judges through OCTOS or one round beyond the elimination of their competitors, whichever comes later.

DEADLINES

You must provide judge names by Wednesday, December 6. All entries not covered by judges after this point will be charged judging fees. We need to do this in order to allow us to hire an adequate pool of experienced judges for the tournament.

IN PERSON

Please note that all in person judges are in a single pool in order to allow us to maximize preferences in the TOC division.

Judges covering in person entries must be available to judge in person. They may, on occasion, be assigned to an online ballot if necessary.

ELIGIBILITY

We care about our judging pool. Because of this, we request information on all of the judges you provide. Please indicate competitive and judging experience for all judges. Please also have each judge complete a judging philosophy in their tabroom.com account if the do not already have one. This information is important to teams as they complete their judge preferences in the TOC division. It is especially important to less resourced programs, as they often have less access to information about judges outside of their geographic area.

To cover entries in the TOC and Open division, if you cannot provide experienced judges, please plan to pay judging fees instead.We’ll be happy to hire great judges to cover your entry, and you’ll be happy with the quality of the judging pool.

Entries in the TOC division will not have access to judge preferences if their judges do not have philosophies posted.

NOVICE DIVISION

Schools may provide varsity debaters as judges to cover Novice division entries at the discretion of the tournament director. Student judges will be held to high standards of conduct. Student judges who behave inappropriately will be removed from the judging pool and their schools will be responsible for judging fees for any missed rounds.You must indicate if a judge is a current student when you enter that judge’s name.