NOTE: LP Prompts are now available at the bottom of this document. Scroll to the bottom.

Due to its size Radio Broadcasting has been uploaded in the "Files for Download" tab.

Western Kentucky University cordially invites you to this year’s Kentucky Forensics Association State Tournament to be held virtually February 10-14, 2021.

The entry deadline is MONDAY, February 8th, 2021 by 5:00 p.m. (CST). All entries and judges will be registered through speechwire.com. You must provide an email address for all judges. For any questions please contact Ganer Newman at ganer.newman@wku.edu. Fees may be paid by check (payable to KFA). Awards will include:

The resolutions for NPDA debate will be a mixture of policy, value, and fact. In accordance with KFA rules, an outside, non-KFA affiliated individual must write the NPDA debate topics.

All divisions of public debate will follow IPDA rules and guidelines. Rules for IPDA public debate can be found at http://www.ipdadebate.info/constitution--bylaws.html. Speaking times will follow the standard 5-2-6- 2-3-5-3 time format with 30 minutes of preparation time before each round. Flex time will be implemented for all rounds. Resolutions will follow the traditional IPDA strike system and vary between value, policy, and fact. Additionally, IPDA guidelines require that all elimination rounds are “flip” rounds, even if the competitors have met each previously in competition. Further IPDA guidelines can be found here: http://www.ipdadebate.info/uploads/4/9/8/1/4981933/guide_to_a_typical_ipda_tournament.pdf

Judge will cover six individual event entries and two parliamentary debate entries, or one judge may cover two IPDA debate entries and two parliamentary debate teams.

All thirteen individual events will use KFA rules for competition unless otherwise indicated. (See LP)

Competitors will provide videos of their performances which will be judged asynchronously.

Our individual events tournament will be conducted asynchronously. Students should record their video, then upload it to their own private (or a team) youtube channel. Once uploaded, students can adjust the video setting to “unlisted.” This will make the video un-searchable, but still viewable to anyone with the link (url.)

When registering for the tournament, Enter all events in Speechwire. After, go to the “video links” tab, then copy and paste each student’s URL. Please double check that the link works!

These links will also be provided to other competitors in the round. To access these links, coaches will need to register their students on speechwire.com. Due to privacy concerns, only judges and students participating in a specific round will have access to video links for that round. Please do not share these links out of respect for the performers.

Preliminary rounds will be judged on Wednesday and Thursday. Final rounds will be judged on Friday and Saturday.

A live streamed awards ceremony will occur on Sunday night at the conclusion of Debate finals. We are aiming for 7:30PM.

Competitor videos only need to be set on “unlisted” for the duration of the tournament. After the tournament is over, competitors can adjust their video setting to “private” ensuring the link will no longer provide access to the video.

All LP prompts will be released 3 days before registration is due. (We will post prompts at noon (CST) on Friday, February 5th. They will be available at the very bottom of this document. Videos must be submitted by 5:00 (CST) on Monday, February 8th.)

Extemp prompts will consist of questions. Students can choose any question from the provided options. From the moment of selection students will have 30 minutes to prepare and then must immediately perform and record their speech with a 7 minute time limit. (Prep time does not need to be filmed.)

Impromptu prompts will be quotations. Students can choose any quotation from the provided options. From the moment of selection, students will have 7 minutes to prepare, perform and record their presentation. (Prep time does not need to be filmed.)

Editorial Impromptuers will get one editorial to prep. From the moment of selection, students will have 9 minutes to prepare, perform and record their presentation. (Prep time does not need to be filmed.)

Broadcasting Participants will receive one packet. They will have 30 minutes to prepare, perform and record their presentation with a five minute time limit. (Prep time does not need to be filmed.)

All material used in the broadcast will be provided by the tournament except for any hypothetical station call letters, time and current weather conditions or forecast and no more than one commercial (maximum 30 seconds). Judges should not watch the contestant during the speech as visible components of the performance are not considered in ranking.

We are using the honor system here. We are confident that our community will maintain the highest ethical standards in these difficult circumstances. We are providing a 3 day period so there is plenty of time to deal with any technical challenges that may arise. The video url must be provided (by way of speechwire) before the close of the 3 day period.

The 1 provided video will be judged in preliminary rounds 1 and 2, and then again in Finals if that student advances.

Once we have all entries/videos registered, we will create the tournament on Tuesday night. All judges should expect the ability to access their ballots by Wednesday morning at 9:00AM. Links can be found at live.speechwire.com. All judges will need to create an account/register with speechwire.com Judges are expected to watch their rounds, provide feedback and rankings. We would like for e-ballots to be returned to us as soon as possible. However, judges will have until Thursday at 5:00PM to complete judging their assigned preliminary rounds. Friday morning final rounds will be released. Judges will have until Saturday at 5:00PM to complete judging their assigned final rounds.

Debate postings will be on Speechwire. Live debates will be hosted in a Zoom Room using the main room as a topic announce and breakout rooms as competition spaces.

A live document will be sent out the week before the tournament with additional information.

Zoom meeting rooms will be private and sent to teams with students/judges in the debates. Observers are allowed, but will be required to appropriately identify themselves.

Yes! Each registered school will have a tournament provided squad room accessible in the Zoom space.

Yes, we will provide a common room, and also team rooms. If there are additional needs please follow up.

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“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think”

Toni Morrison

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it”

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“If you don’t tell your story, somebody else will”

Frank X Walker

Editorial Impromptu Prompt: (Only 1 Option)

The pandemic changed college admissions. That’s a good thing.

Universities should consider foregoing SAT and ACT requirements for at least the next few years and acquire new data on other predictors of academic success.

By The Boston Globe Editorial Board: Updated February 3, 2021, 4:00 a.m.

There was a bit of good news for high school students across the country last month: The College Board announced that it plans to nix the SAT’s optional essay section and subject tests, which have long added fees and headaches for college applicants. The move comes amid a rapidly changing world of college admissions, as colleges have been rethinking the role of standardized tests in their applications — with some reducing the weight they carry and others scrapping them entirely. And, as a result of testing sites shutting down because of the pandemic, three-quarters of colleges chose to temporarily forgo testing requirements for this year’s admissions process.

The pandemic disruption, unwelcome as it may be for schools, creates the opportunity for colleges to run a natural experiment to learn how to make their admissions processes more fair and rigorous. They should carefully monitor how classes admitted without traditional testing do compared with other student cohorts, and use the results to inform decisions about their college admission practices in the future. By closely tracking the performance of their next few undergraduate classes, schools can see whether they can (or should) make standardized tests optional in their applications or remove them entirely.

Undergraduate colleges have been tinkering with their admissions systems for decades, trying to find the right combination of high school grades, test scores, and other traits to evaluate applicants. Although standardized tests like the AP and SAT can level the field in one respect — providing a way for the proverbial diamond in the rough to catch the attention of admissions officers — they skew it in other ways. SAT test scores for Black and Latino students, for example, often significantly trail those of white students — in some cases by nearly 100 points per section — and students from wealthier families tend to get the best results. A thriving test-prep industry helps those students who can afford the classes prepare for the tests. And though the College Board maintains that its tests are fair and that the score gap is reflective of an unequal society rather than the tests themselves, there is also some evidence that racial bias is baked into the test’s design.

SAT and ACT requirements may also be deterring some prospective students from applying to selective colleges. Many schools that dropped testing requirements this year, including competitive state colleges and elite private universities, saw an application surge. Cornell University, for example, had 17,000 more applicants than it did last year, which contributed to an uptick in applications from Black, Hispanic, low-income, and first-generation students.