Evidence Sharing Rules

Policy

Standard policy debate community norms: All evidence must be shared before a speech is given. Email chains are preferable. Judges may opt out of inclusion on email chains.

LD/PF

Please see the following statement in the PHSSL bylaws (Articles B4.7A & B5.7A) re: evidence sharing:

"Students have one minute per piece of evidence or what is deemed reasonable by judges outside of prep time to produce all complete requested evidence, then prep time starts for the opposing team. Evidence needs to be clearly highlighted and the evidence needs to be produced in its entirety with at least a link to the full piece of evidence. Otherwise, prep time will not be deducted for either team during the exchange of evidence. Evidence that cannot be produced at that point leads to an automatic loss of the round if the opposing team calls for a “formal evidence challenge” which may not be done after the completion of the round."

Additionally, teams registered in open Public Forum and open Lincoln-Douglas are strongly encouraged to use email chains to distribute evidence and minimize evidence sharing time in round. Email chains should include cut cards/pieces of evidence. A card is any piece of evidence, directly cited from a news or journal article and includes the following: author name, date of publication, link to original source, and highlighted/underlined lines from article's excerpt. Cards should include full paragraphs (not simply paraphrasing) from the article but teams may only need to read highlighted/underlined sentences.