Judging

Each school is expected to provide a qualified judge-critic for each entry. The judging pool will be supplemented with a number of outstanding college debate coaches, assistant coaches, and debaters who will serve as guest judges. We once again anticipate one of the most experienced judging pools offered at a tournament this year. All judges must have a publicly-available judge philosophy posted online. All judges are obligated through the octafinals.

In order to facilitate the mutual preference system, we ask that each judge be available for four rounds of preliminary debates. In cases in which a school has been granted two entries, one judge may cover the obligation for both teams. There must be one and only one win (and one and only one loss) assigned by the designated judge as the decision for each debate. We will enforce a decision time of 2 hours and 30 minutes after the announced start time of each debate. We will use ordinal ranking of judges in our mutual preference system.

For those schools absolutely unable to provide a qualified judge-critic, judges may be hired for an additional fee of $60 per round. We must be notified of any hired judge requests no later than December 1.