Pre-Tournament Congress Update

Hello! My name is Alex Stoneman and I’m going to be directing and serving as the parliamentarian for the SpeakfortheArts Congress tournament.

First, I want to say thank you very much for registering and participating in this tournament for a great cause. I hope everyone has a great time competing! In order to make sure that happens, I would highly encourage everyone, competitors and judges, to read the following information in its entirety prior to tomorrow’s tournament.

Schedule:

Due to the fact we only have 10 Congress entries, there are going to be some changes to the schedule. We will not be having break/final rounds, and thus, all 10 competitors will be competing in the same one session for the entirety of the tournament. With that, we have decided to shorten the Congress schedule in the interest of efficiency and longevity. The schedule will now be as follows:

SATURDAY

Session 1: 10:00 AM – 12:30 PM

Session 2: 1:45 PM – 3:45 PM

SUNDAY

Session 3: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

I anticipate 6.5 hours of debate in a small chamber will be plenty for most competitors, as they will be able to speak frequently on a number of different pieces of legislation.

Moreover, if there are competitors who would like to continue speaking or working on their skills, including those preparing for nationals, I will happily listen to speeches and/or practice with them myself Sunday afternoon to make up for the lost time debating!

Docket:

I have received questions about the prelims/finals split of the docket given that there are no finals. I am leaving that to the chamber to decide, letting them discuss and vote on it during the opening meeting. I anticipate either combining all 15 pieces of legislation into one, tournament-wide docket, or using the 10 prelims pieces on Saturday and 5 finals pieces on Sunday.

Judges:

We will have the same 3 judges for all Congress sessions. They and the parliamentarian will submit 1 overall preferential rank at the end of Sunday’s third session; the sum of those 4 rankings will be used to determine the final placements of the tournament, with the parliamentarian’s score serving as a tiebreaker.

General Procedures:

The Congress procedures will run as outlined in the rules page of the tournament site (http://speakforthearts.tabroom.com/), on the right column, under Tournament Pages and Forms. Notable rules include Direct Questioning in 30 second blocks, and the use of internet in-round being allowed with all evidence subject to verification.

Online Procedures:

In terms of online procedures, I would encourage all competitors to keep their cameras on during the round, and everyone should have their microphones muted if they are not speaking. I also suggest all competitors and judges get into the Congress Zoom session as promptly as possible following the opening meetings and lunch breaks. The chamber will have “tech time” of 5 minutes per competitor, which will begin running if the chamber’s advancement is inhibited by that speaker’s technical difficulties.

Questions/Contacts:

If you have any questions regarding this or other information before or during the tournament, I would be more than happy to answer them. Feel free to email me at alexstoneman@empowerexpression.org, or text/call me at 330-502-1686.

I am greatly looking forward to this weekend and hope you all are as well. I’ll see you tomorrow for a fun day of debate!

Best,

Alex Stoneman