ANNOUNCEMENT RE NPDL-TOC AND CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK

Dear Parli Community:

We are incredibly sad to announce that because of the Coronavirus outbreak, the NPDL Tournament of Champions will not be held on April 4 and 5. We had hoped to find a way to continue as planned, but that has become infeasible and unjustifiable for several reasons:

1. Concern over the potential for spread of the virus at TOC, particularly because this tournament brings together groups from different regions of the country;

2. Concern over the potential exclusion of immunocompromised, disabled, and other at-risk participants from the tournament;

3. Concern because the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors announced this morning that all gatherings of 50 or more people should be cancelled to reduce community spread;

4. Concern over the exclusion of a growing number of participants who will be unable to travel to the tournament due to travel bans and school limitations; 

5. And, most simply, because our host site, the Bentley School, is no longer available given these conditions. 

We understand this is a great disappointment for qualified debaters and the whole community. We still hope to host the 2020 NPDL-TOC at a later date, and will send out a survey shortly to determine whether there are alternate dates that work for most competitors (though we realize there will likely be continued uncertainty due to this public health crisis). 

We plan to update the community no later than May 1 about whether the tournament can be rescheduled. We appreciate your patience as we all try to navigate a very difficult situation. The Spring League Meeting, which was scheduled to occur at TOC, is canceled. 

Additionally, we want to announce today that we are freezing the rankings for the remainder of the season. This is in order to remove the points incentive to attend tournaments, in the interest of public health, and to avoid penalizing immunocompromised students who cannot attend tournaments for the remainder of the year. Any tournaments which have already occurred, but have not yet been added to the rankings, will still be included in this year’s rankings. Any tournaments which have not yet happened this season but are still scheduled to happen will not accrue points for this year’s rankings. The one exception to this rule will be state-qualifying tournaments, since points for all state qualifiers are added once all of them have been completed. 

We don’t make this choice lightly, and will do everything in our power to make a 2020 NPDL-TOC possible. As always, please feel free to email us with any questions or comments.

The National Parliamentary Debate League Board