North Texas Longhorns District Qualifier

for the 2020 National Tournament

Congressional Debate

We invite the member schools of the North Texas Longhorn NFL District to attend the Student Congress portion of the district tournament. The paragraphs below should help schools prepare and compete in the tournament. 

DATE AND LOCATION

The Student Congress will take place at the Carrollton Farmers Branch Technology Learning Center located at 2427 Carrick St in Farmers Branch 75234 You may use that address on a internet search engine such as Mapquest to find the center. The date of the competition will be Thursday, April 9.  

SCHEDULE

We will begin the day with registration and check in at 8:00 am. Preliminary sessions will begin no later than 8:30 am. They will continue until 11:45 am by which time they must be concluded. Because we are using the new pilot rules, we will be conducting a final session for those students qualifying. If we have two Houses, at least 6 students in from each chamber will qualify for the final session.  The super session will begin at 12:30 pm and continue until 3:45 pm. Awards will take place at 4:15pm. 

Lunch will be the responsibility of individual schools. However, we will follow past practices and procedures for lunch. A member of the district committee will take orders from individual schools for pizzas that will be delivered to the center during the lunch break. The cost is nominal and we usually get a great deal. More details will be provided as we get closer to the contest.  

SUBMISSION OF LEGISLATION

Schools wishing to enter the Student Congress will be expected to submit legislation to Deborah Garoui,  no later than Tuesday, March 3. You may submit legislation to Deb by e-mailing her at deborah.garoui@kellerisd.net  The procedure to do that is listed below

PLEASE USE A MS WORD DOCUMENT TO SUBMIT YOUR LEGISLATION, USING APPROPRIATE FORMATTING. MAKE SURE YOU IDENTIFY YOUR SCHOOL ON THE LEGISLATION. PLEASE USE THE TEMPLATE THAT YOU WILL FIND ON THE NSDA WEBSITE.
  

The templates for the legislation may be found on the NSDA website. Please use those to make sure your legislation is in the appropriate format. If you follow that deadline, we will return the proposed legislation to you by Tuesday, March 17.   Hopefully, that should give you ample time to get your students started on researching the legislation.    Please be aware of the following as well: New rules now require any legislation submitted be the original work of the school/students submitting the legislation. Legislation that comes from other sources will be treated as plagarism and the penalties will apply. 

ENTRY RULES AND PROCEDURES 

Once you enter the tournament, the website will allow you to print out the registration form.   You must also complete the single entry letter of intent if your student has competed in either/both of the individual events and debate portion of the district tournament. That link may be found on the previous page. That must be brought to registration with the necessary signatures and fees. The entry fee for Student Congress will be $20 per student. You must have either a school check or copy of a submitted purchase order at the time of registration to enter the Congress. 

You must notify the district chair (David Huston) by April 2  of your intent to enter the Congress.  You may do so by entering students on the Tabroom.com website. That intent should include the names of your students. Other procedures for conducting the Student Congress will be explained in the following paragraphs.  You may also e-mail the necessary registration form to David by the date above. 

LINKS FOR REGISTRATION FORMS AND LEGISLATION

Legislation will be sent to all member schools as an e-mail attachment by the deadline listed above.  We will also post the legislation on the Tabroom.com website as well. 

PROCEDURES FOR CONDUCTING THE CONGRESS 

 Special Rules for the House

a.     Depending on entries, there will be two or three preliminary houses with schools equally represented in each. 

b.       Schools with multiple entries will submit student groupings on the registration form.  If the form doesn't allow you to do so, you must send an e-mail to the district chair indicating which (if any) students are running for Presiding Officer. Groups may be entered on the Tabroom.com website once you have entered your students.

c.     The tabulation committee will use  Tabroom.com to randomly put students into houses. Students will then be moved from one house to another to meet the grouping goals and balance the houses that are offered. 

e.        After sectioning, the first four nominated PO candidates (based on date of your e-mail grouping) in each chamber will be placed on the nomination list.  By rule, the sectioning cannot take into account balancing PO candidates.  For example, if House 1 has five candidates and House 2 has two, sectioning cannot be changed to accommodate the 5^th candidate in house 1.

f.         The first session will be scheduled to allow for 10 minutes of debate per student in the chamber. The goal will be to keep each chamber at less than 18 people in the chamber. That will allow us to follow a schedule of 8:30-11:30 for that preliminary round

g.       Tabulation of results will take place during student lunch.  If entries warrant, we will conduct a final House session consisting of no less than 12 students (top 4-6 from each chamber of 2-3 chambers). That session will begin no later than 1:00pm and again, go the requisite time limit of 10 minutes per person in the chamber.

h.       Nominations:  The scorers in each preliminary chamber will rank and nominate the top 8 students in each chamber. For each scorer, all remaining participants will receive a rank of "9"

 i. Designated individuals will tabulate the results in private.  After initial tabulation has concluded, coaches will be invited to check the work done by the committee and have the committee explain the process of selection of finalists.

j.         If necessary and entries warrant, after this verification period, the tournament committee will post the persons participating in the Final Session.  

Special Rules for the Senate:
 

a.        Based on the number of entries received, there may be one Senate session that will have the same parliamentarian for the day. If entries exceed twenty entries, we will plan to hold two chambers of the Senate, and follow the same procedures as the House for breaking to a Final Session

b.       PO candidates must be submitted by Thursday, April 2, at 2:00 p.m.  The first four nominated students will be allowed to run for PO.

c.        The first session will be scheduled to allow for 10 minutes of debate per student in the chamber. The goal will be to keep each chamber with less than 18 people in the chamber. That will allow us to follow a schedule of 8:30-11:30 for that preliminary round. If there are fewer than 20 persons entered in the Senate, we will have two rounds of competition, with the afternoon session beginning no later than 1:00 and following the same procedures as the first.

d.       Tabulation will follow the procedure outlined in the district tournament manual to determine the placings for each student

e.        After tabulation and the announcement of awards, coaches will be allowed to view the  results with explanations from the district committee.

Special Rules for Final Sessions (House and Senate)

a.        The Final Session will start no later than 1:00pm

b.       There are no authorship speeches in the Final Session.

c.        Nominations for the top students and those representing the district at the National Student Congress will be done using the combined scores of the adult judges.  Those procedures are outlined in the NSDA Unified Tournament Manual.

d.   Tabulation of the results will be done by the district committee.  Prior to announcement of the ballot, coaches will have the opportunity to verify the committee’s work.