Tournament Rules/Entry Guidelines

TOURNAMENT RULES AND ENTRY GUIDELINES

ELIGIBILITY:   A novice is a first year competitor, honestly appraised by her or his coach as a beginner.  A student who has never competed in debate, but has competed in individual events, may be entered in novice debate and open individual events. (Please note that any student, who has competed more than a year in any of the debate events, should not be entered as a novice in a different debate event). Similarly, a student may be entered in open debate and novice individual events if s/he has experience in the former, but not the latter. In individual events, a student's assigned division must remain consistent across patterns. Students with pre-high school debate experience (i.e., middle school), may enter either the Novice or Open divisions, at the best judgment of their coaches. All students are eligible for open division, at the discretion of her/his coach. Maverick debaters will only be permitted under extreme circumstances and must be approved by the tournament director – hybrids should be clearly designated as such.  Individual event pieces may not have been used the prior competitive year.

Middle SchoolFor the first time, we are offering middle school divisions for all speech and debate events. Eligibility for the middle school divisions are students between fifth to eighth grades. Each division will have the appropriate number of elimination rounds and speaker awards (Except LD has no speaker awards). We strongly encourage all middle school students to enter the middle school division. If a middle school division does not attract enough entries for an independent division, they will be collapsed into the high school novice.  If this happens coaches will be notified on October 13. Middle School debate will follow the novice schedule.

 ENTRY LIMITS (see exceptions below): Because we are limited on the number of rooms, a school may enter a maximum of 10 debate teams, in any one event, Parliamentary, Policy Team, Public Forum Debate, with no more than 5 teams entered in any one division (open or novice).  A school may enter a maximum of 10 LD debaters, with no more than 5 L-D debaters in any one division (open or novice). In Student Congress and Individual Events, a school may enter as many or as few students as a school chooses. Any entries beyond the maximum specified will be placed on a standby list and entered into the tournament upon availability by the tournament directors.  Email your overage list of “hopeful adds” and we will do our best to accommodate your requests provided that we have the available rooms on our campus. 

Please note that last year’s tournament contained the largest entries that we ever received and our numbers meant that the tournament was at full capacity.  If the trend continues, or we continue to grow, we will need to cut off entries and therefore cannot guarantee the addition of all teams on our standby list.

Debate (Team Policy, Lincoln-Douglas (LD), Parliamentary (Parli), and Public Forum (PoFo) Debate offered)*. 

·       Should any debater or team advance to elimination rounds on Saturday, they may only miss one round of Individual Events competition per pattern and receive an “averaged score” that would be an average of the two remaining scores for IE rounds 2 and 3.  Missing more than 1 round of IE competition per pattern due to debate advancement will result in forfeiture of IE competition and the tournament will gladly reimburse the entry costs.  This is to eliminate any unfair advantage, bias or challenge that may result from having to average too many rounds of placement.) We hope that this will allow a more inviting competition environment that is accommodating and fair. 

·       PLEASE NOTE THAT WE DO NOT BREAK BRACKETS AT THE TOURNAMENT. (This means that the teams will be assigned elimination debates based on their seeded placement in the tournament’s preliminary rounds regardless of whether the teams are from the same school.  If two teams from the school are scheduled to debate, we recommend that a coach determine which team will move on to the next elimination round and notify the tournament’s tabulation staff).

Individual Events/ Congress:. No entry limits per school with the following exceptions:

·          CONFLICT PATTERNS: Students can enter ONE event in each pattern

·          NO DOUBLE ENTRIES ARE ALLOWED.

§  Pattern A:  congress, extemporaneous, informative, dramatic interpretation, duo interpretation, oratorical interpretation

§  Pattern B:  impromptu, persuasive, humorous interpretation, thematic interpretation, original prose and poetry

RULES FOR TECHNOLOGY AND EVIDENCE USE:

Team Policy debate

Students are permitted to use computers in rounds in order to flow speeches, prepare speeches or access pre-prepared evidence files.  Students may have a live Internet connection only for the purpose of accessing files on Dropbox, Cloud, or a similar system for electronic storage. Students may not access, cut, or site new evidence and sources found from the Internet during the round.  If a student violates this policy, the tabulation room should be immediately notified.

L-D debate

Students are permitted to use computers in rounds in order to flow speeches, prepare speeches or access pre-prepared evidence files.  Students may have a live Internet connection only for the purpose of accessing files on Dropbox, Cloud, or a similar system for electronic storage. Students may not access, cut, or site new evidence and sources found from the Internet during the round.  If a student violates this policy, the tabulation room should be immediately notified.

Public Forum (PoFo) debate

Students are permitted to use computers in rounds in order to flow speeches, prepare speeches or access pre-prepared evidence files.  Students may have a live Internet connection only for the purpose of accessing files on Dropbox, Cloud, or a similar system for electronic storage. Students may not access, cut, or site new evidence and sources found from the Internet during the round.  If a student violates this policy, the tabulation room should be immediately notified.

Parliamentary (Parli) debate

The intent of Parliamentary Debate is to encourage an extemporaneous or impromptu argumentation. Reference to “outside materials” should be limited; instead, students should rely on general knowledge, common sense, and application of logic and analysis. Nevertheless, the use of “outside materials” is allowed within the following parameters:

1)          No prepared materials may be brought into the debate round for the debater’s use.

2)          Debaters are not permitted to read published material in the speeches of the debate to support their argument claims.

3)          During the debate, students may consult notes prepared during the preparation period.

4)          Debaters may take and use notes during the debate.

Students may not use or access computers at any time during a parli round or during parli prep.

If special circumstances exist that require students to use a computer or technology, please contact tournament staff at dopeters@fullerton.edu NO LATER THAN OCTOBER 13, 2014.  Special accommodations and arrangements cannot be made during registration or at the tournament.

Extemporaneous Speaking

Computers equipped with removable wireless cards must have the cards removed before the beginning of any round of competition. It is the responsibility of the contestant to disengage the equipment.  Computers with built‐in wireless capability may be used only if the wireless capability is disabled. It is the responsibility of the contestant to disable the equipment. Computers or other electronic devices may not be used to receive information from any source (coaches or assistants included) inside or outside of the room in which the competition occurs. Internet access, use of email, instant messaging, or other means of receiving information from sources inside or outside of the competition room are prohibited.

Smart Phone Policy

Students may only use phones in debate rounds for the timing of their speeches.  Accessing the internet, searching for research, and consulting coaches via phone call or texts in-round are strictly prohibited.

Source Integrity

All students must bring copies of all sources, which must include the full context of the citation, not simply

a retyped list of short sentences and quotes. Debaters must make said sources available to either their opponent(s) in the round, and/or their judges after the round upon request. Debate entries failing to do so, or debaters who significantly misrepresent sources in the round may be disqualified at the discretion of Tab. Speech contestants should have the full original source of all material in interpretive events available at the tournament, in addition to their cutting. Oratory and Extemp students should have the text of any material they cite in their speeches available at the tournament. Students misrepresenting sources or using sources not available may be disqualified at the discretion of Tab.