Valparaiso Debate Tournament

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General information

This is a High School tournament in Indiana.

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Dear Coaches,

You and your students are invited to the October 28, 2023, Valparaiso Dr. Larry B. Stuber Memorial Debate Tournament.  Please plan to enter through Door # 1 and establish your team’s tables in the Cafeteria. Buses may park in the lot North of the School. There is limited space for cars and vans in the East Parking Lot across from Door # 1

Events Available: 

• Lincoln-Douglas, Public Forum, Policy, World Schools Debate (modified), and Congress. 
• World Schools Debate will offer ALL Impromptu Rounds (see explanation)
• We will offer both Novice and Varsity divisions. (Note that some events may be combined based on registration numbers.) If one member of a policy, public forum, and/or World Schools Team is a Veteran (Varsity Member), that team will be considered Varsity.
• The debate tournament will have 4 rounds. Rounds 3 & 4 will be power matched. 

We will have certificates for contestants and trophies for team sweepstakes. 

Registration:

• Entries are due in SpeechWire by Monday, October 23^rd by 5:00 P.M. Central Time.
• Drops may be made via SpeechWire until midnight on Friday, October 27^th.

After that time, please text 219-363-6618 for email Mary (mfridh@valpo.k12.in.us).   Email is preferable! Entries are capped at a total of 40 per team. Students should bring an electronic device and activate their SpeechWire accounts to be able to receive announcements.

5. Congressional Debate – All students will compete in the morning Preliminary round. The top competitors per Chamber will advance to the Super Chamber of 15-16 in the late morning/early afternoon. All others will compete in the Consolation Session in the morning/afternoon. Both Novice and Varsity Divisions will have a Super Session and a Consolation Session: The Best of the Rest (consolation rounds may be combined in the event of small congress entries).  The varsity chambers will nominate and elect their presiding officers. Please email names of varsity members who would be willing to preside over the Novice Chambers to Mary (mfridh@valpo.k12.in.us).

• Legislation to be debated will be ISSDA Sept. – Oct. Docket #s 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 12

 2. The National Clean Slate Act of 2024

 3. A Resolution to End Qualified Immunity

 4. A Bill to Provide the Cherokee Nation with a Voting House Member

 6. A Bill to Guarantee Economic Sovereignty

 9. A Bill to Require First Responders to Carry Naloxon

12. A Bill to Ban Social Media Advertisements Targeted at Users 16 and Under

5. Lincoln-Douglas
   • Both Divisions will be speaking on the September/October topic as noted by the NSDA:
     • Resolved: The United States ought to guarantee the right to housing.

5. Public Forum Debate
   • Both divisions will be speaking on the September/October topic as noted by the NSDA:
     • Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its military presence in the Arctic.

5. Policy Debate
   • Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase fiscal redistribution in the United States by adopting a federal jobs guarantee, expanding Social Security, and/or providing a basic income.
   • Novice Topic Areas:
     • Artificial Intelligence: Restrict development and/or use of Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWs)
     • Biotechnology: Ban the use of germline genetic engineering in humans
     • Biotechnology: Substantially increase funding for vaccine research
     • Cyber: Ban offensive cyber operations
   • Restrictions:

                   No counter-plans

                   No Kritiks

5. World Schools Debate (Please read carefully!)
5. Experimental/Modified All-Impromptu-Topic World Schools Debate Division(s)

5. Assuming sufficient entries, we will offer both Varsity and Novice divisions of a slightly modified format of WSD.  (If the number of entries we receive will not support two separate divisions, Novice and Varsity teams will be combined into the same division, but the tab room will make its best efforts to pair teams against similarly experienced competition in as many debates as possible). Please read carefully and make your students aware of the modifications to the WSD format, which are designed to simplify this event for this tournament, but are sufficiently different that your students should be fully aware of them in advance of signing up to compete.

5. In place of the traditional mix of prepared and impromptu topics, our WSD division(s) will offer four (4) rounds of debate on impromptu topics only. In other words, we will have no pre-announced "prepared" WSD topics at this tournament. As such, any 3-5 debaters with a pen or two and a notebook or legal pad between them can show up on Saturday morning and (hopefully) enjoy a day of debating without having to prepare cases ahead of time for one or more prepared topics.

5. Unfortunately, after using our fingers and toes to count a couple of times (measure twice, cut once, you know), we realized that having four different impromptu topics, with conventional preparation time, was not viable. Thus, to avoid unreasonably elongating the tournament day into moonlight-madness debating, we have made modifications to the WSD format for our tournament that should allow the WSD division(s) to run these four (4) impromptu rounds within the same temporal footprint as the other divisions (well, let's just say it . . . Policy . . . because they're invariably the ones on which everyone else is waiting).

5. First, there will be just two (2) topics for the four (4) impromptu rounds.  Each team will debate on both sides (Proposition and Opposition) of each of those two topics. Teams will debate Topic 1 in both Rounds 1 and 2. Teams that are assigned the proposition for Round 1 will debate as the opposition in Round 2. Then, after a lunch break, they will debate Topic 2 in Rounds 3 and 4 in the same manner, switching sides for the second round.

5. Teams will have 60 minutes of preparation time for Rounds 1 and 3, i.e., the first time they debate each topic.  (It is possible that we may blast Topic 1 and sides out in the morning while teams are traveling to Valparaiso so that the students can begin their preparation before their actual arrival at VHS, but we are still ironing out the wrinkles in the overall schedule and will make a final determination about that shortly). Teams will, however, only have 30 minutes of preparation time for Rounds 2 and 4, i.e., the second time they debate each topic, when they will be debating on the other side. Beyond the logistical benefit of helping to shave an hour off the end of the day, the logic behind the time allocation is that, prior to arriving at the prep room for Rounds 2 and 4, teams will have already done their brainstorming about those same topics in the odd-numbered Rounds and will also have had the benefit of hearing (and debating against) their opponents' cases, from which they can and should borrow ideas (or, alternatively, know what they don't want to include in their own cases) when they approach the topic from the other side. Crafty teams will likely find some opportunities to tease a few extra minutes of prep, e.g., by perhaps having non-speaking debaters think about Rounds 2/4 during 1/3 or by quickly wolfing down their in-between-round granola bars and focusing on the next round before the official prep time for it even starts.  Craftiness is good.  And making efficient use of the limited "down time" at tournaments is a portable skill.  Have at it.  

5. Second, we will also make some minor modifications to the speech times themselves. Essentially, all the speeches that are normally 8 minutes long will be 6 minutes long and the last/Reply/Rebuttal speeches will be 3 minutes long instead of four minutes long, i.e.:
5.  
   • 1st Proposition Speech -- 6 minutes
   • 1st Opposition Speech -- 6 minutes
   • 2nd Proposition Speech -- 6 minutes
   • 2nd Opposition Speech -- 6 minutes
   • 3rd Proposition Speech -- 6 minutes
   • 3rd Opposition Speech -- 6 minutes
   • Opposition Reply Speech -- 3 minutes
   • Proposition Reply Speech -- 3 minutes

5. Having judged enough WSD impromptu rounds to know that teams often do not utilize all of their allocated speech time, we are of the opinion that the modified speech times should not substantially impact the quality of the debates or the associated learning experience. We also intend to keep the time limits in mind when we select the impromptu topics. As the mathematically savvy among you will not doubt realize, this change shaves almost 15 minutes off the total length of each round (or a full hour over the course of the day) and allows us to rely with a fair amount of confidence that these WSD rounds can be completed in one-hour time blocks. 

5. In addition, although teams may of course present their 1st and 2nd main arguments in their 1st Speeches and a 3rd main argument in their 2nd Speeches, given the shortened speech times, they are no longer required to present 3 main arguments or to do so in that sequence. Our normative expectation is that teams will present the majority of their argument in the 1st Speech and it would be exceedingly bad form for a team to skinny up the 1st Speech and try and sandbag two main arguments into the 2nd Speech in an attempt to strategically overwhelm the other side's 3rd Speaker. (Pro tip: If you have students who, when made aware of these modifications, immediately and independently recognize the Machiavellian/Slytherin-like ways it can be exploited, you should steer said kiddo towards Policy, where his or her dark, damaged, and twisted soul will have substantial value). But with 4 fewer minutes of "constructive" time between the First and Second Substantive Speeches to present their cases in this modified format, we recognize that teams could reasonably choose to offer only two main arguments and that, if they do so, it should not be considered a pearl-clutching, gasping, rules-violation situation. This modified format is unchartered territory and we're just trying to open the doors to allow a little flexibility in argument-presentation terms in order to minimize the effect of negative externalities from rules applied to the normal format.

5. The first and last minutes of each side's first three speeches will remain protected time with regard to POIs.  The convention would be for speakers to accept 1 or 2 POIs during their speeches (that's down from 2-3 because those speeches are shorter).

5. Our overriding goal is to make some early-season tweaks to this event to reduce some perceived entry barriers and make it easier to get students on the bus in the morning and then up and actually debating. Although prepared topics clearly have pedagogical purpose as well, we wanted to structure this event as an alternative that focused primarily on the benefits of collaborative argument construction within an abbreviated time frame, which happens to overlap with what we believe to be the most fun part of WSD. Other tournaments later in the season can and presumably will offer the standard ISSDA WSD format and your students will have ample opportunities to prepare for end-of-season competition in this event. We're hopeful that our experiment will bring some students into the WSD fold and allow everyone to spend a weekend focusing on skills development with regard to impromptu topics. 

5. The VHS SDMT coaching "brain trust," with the assistance of Generative AI and several linked supercomputers on loan from the federal intelligence agencies, are working hard to settle upon a couple of banger impromptu topics that we hope will (a) involve subject matter with which substantially all your students will be familiar (i.e., topics on which your students should be able to spot the issues from their adolescent experience and knowledge base rather than PF-ish topics that would be great . . . if the students had a couple of weeks to research them), (b) have the "legs" to remain fresh for a second round of argumentative development, and (c) that your students should find both challenging and entertaining enough to enjoy debating.

5. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions or suggestions. 

5. As usual, No electronics allowed for prep or during rounds. Students should write out notes and speeches on paper.

• Students may use 2 reference books for impromptu rounds.
• Students will have 1 hour prep per impromptu rounds 1 & 3
• Students will have 30-minute prep per impromptu rounds 2 & 4

5. Awards @ 4:00 p.m., CST (we hope)
   • Yes (Gavels for POs, Ribbons or Certificates for the Top Eight, and Sweepstakes Trophies for Top 5 Teams)
5. Judges
   • 1 judge per 4 debaters (5 debaters = 2 judges, etc.); however, if you are bringing WSD Teams, 2 WSD Teams = 1 Judge
   • All judges must be prepared to judge all events
   • All judges must be registered with a valid email and bring a tablet or laptop as we will be using electronic balloting.
   • Judges must stay in the building and be available for the entire tournament
5. Varsity debaters with a minimum 2 years of experience and a minimum of 250 points may judge only novice events. 2023 high school debate graduates must judge novice only.

5. Food
   • Students ~ breakfast, lunch & snack items will be available for purchase in the Cafeteria.
   • Judges ~ breakfast and lunch items will be available in the Judges’ Lounge in the lower Red Hallway.

5. Registration
   • Registration on SpeechWire  www.speechwire.com
     • DUE by 5 pm (CST) on Monday, October 23, 2023 (Registration will remain open after the deadline for drops only. Please list all judges’ names.)
     • This is an Open Tournament; however, you must be a Registered User in order to use SpeechWire to register for the tournament.
     • Novice = an individual with no previous high school speech or debate experience prior to September 2023. All others are considered to be Varsity.
     • Send registration questions to Mary Fridh – email: mfridh@valpo.k12.in.us
     • Final registration is Saturday, October 28^th.  at Valparaiso HS from 7:00 to 7:30 a.m. (CST), with a judges’ meeting in the cafeteria at 7:45 a.m.
     • Rounds will start promptly at 8 am (CST) ~ we hope!

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone in Valpo!

Heather Beach, Mary Fridh, John Peluso, and Trevor Wells (Coaches), the VHS Speech, Debate & Mock Trial Team & the VHS Forensics Boosters, Inc. (FBI)

Manager contact information

Mary Fridh
Email address: mfridh@valpo.k12.in.us
Phone number: 219-363-6618

Mailing address

None provided