You are invited to the First Annual IUB Walter Center Civic Education Debate Tournament: Celebrating the 250th anniversaries of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution

When: Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM

Where: Ballantine Hall, Indiana University, 1020 E. Kirkwood Ave., Bloomington, IN

Who: Any middle school, high school, or college student in Indiana (including private or homeschooled) *No prior debate experience or school-team sponsorship required*

Website: https://religiousstudies.indiana.edu/news-events/debate-tournament.html, https://candygbrown.com/tournament/

Registration deadline extended!!!

We are extending registration. Please enter your students on SpeechWire as soon as possible so we can plan rooms, judges, and food. Adds and drops will be accepted until Monday, October 5, at 5:00 p.m. Registration link: https://www.speechwire.com/c-info.php?tournid=21614.

Events or divisions with fewer than six entries may be combined with a neighboring event or division or cancelled.

Events and Divisions

Middle School (novice):

• Congressional Debate
• Middle School LD Debate
• World Schools Debate
• Speech: Declamation, Dramatic Interpretation, Scripted Duo, Original Oratory, Poetry, Prose, and Program Oral Interpretation (combined into four pools for competition: Oratory/Declamation, Drama/Duo, Poetry, Prose/POI)

High School (novice and varsity):

• Congressional Debate
• Public Forum Debate
• World Schools Debate
• Lincoln-Douglas Debate
• Policy Debate

We will use NSDA/ISSDA October resolutions / dockets for all events. See bottom of this announcement for details

College (novice): Constitutional Convention Debate and Policy Debate have been cancelled for 2026 because of insufficient entries.

Included for participants:

• Free, novice-friendly online training for Congressional Debate
• Entrance fees waived and complimentary food and beverages through generous support from The Walter Center for Career Achievement
• Awards: trophies for places 1-5 in each debate event; medallions for top speakers in each non-Congress debate event and best presiding officer in each Congress division; ribbons for places 6-10 in all debate events; certificates for the top ten in each speech event. The number of places awarded in each event and division depends on its entries: up to five trophy places, and never more places than entries minus one. Sweepstakes trophies for up to three schools in each division, with configurations depending on registration numbers. Commemorative keepsakes for all participants.

Deadlines:

Individual add/drop deadline (via SpeechWire.com): Mon. Oct. 5 by 5 p.m.

Final drop deadline (via text: 812-269-2710 or email: browncg@iu.edu): Sat. Oct. 10 by 6:00 a.m.

Register via SpeechWire.com

Team leaders (head coaches and teachers/parents/college students without a team) begin by creating a SpeechWire.com account: https://www.speechwire.com/c-account-create.php. Before you can enter your students and judges in the tournament, you must first collect email addresses from each of them, set up SpeechWire.com accounts for them, and remind each of them to activate their accounts; please also collect cell phone numbers to facilitate day-of-tournament communications. No two participants can share the same email address. If you intend to record NSDA points, sync your students' NSDA and SpeechWire accounts prior to the tournament; this allows for auto posting of points, which will save you time later.

PLEASE help us plan by submitting entries as early as possible—even if you expect to make changes. This will help ensure that we have enough food and awards for all participants!

Judges:

Each school should register (via SpeechWire.com) judges according to its entries, counting each entry, or fraction thereof, in each event separately:

• Public Forum, Lincoln-Douglas, and Middle School LD (flighted): 1 judge for every 4 entries
• Policy and World Schools (not flighted): 1 judge for every 2 entries
• Congress: 1 judge for every 4 entries
• Middle school speech events: 1 judge for every 6 entries

An entry is one competitor, team, duo, or squad; for example, a Public Forum team or a World Schools squad counts as one entry. A school with 3 Policy teams and 5 Public Forum teams needs 2 + 2 = 4 judges. SpeechWire will show each school's judge obligation during registration. The $1 missing-judge fees on SpeechWire invoices are nominal placeholders that show how many judges a school still owes; they cannot be paid to buy out of a judging obligation. Please contact Candy Brown if you cannot meet your obligation.

Parents, teachers, coaches, and invited civic leaders may judge any event. High school students who compete in varsity debate may judge middle school debate, and high school students who compete in varsity speech may judge middle school speech. College students may judge any high school or middle school event. Judges should bring an electronic device for online balloting. All adults must present government-issued identification to enter Ballantine Hall.

Photography and recording: Photographs and/or video will be taken at this event. By taking part in this event, you grant the event organizers full rights to use the images resulting from the photography/video filming, and any reproductions or adaptations of the images for fundraising, publicity or other purposes to help achieve the group's aims. This might include (but is not limited to), the right to use them in their printed and online publicity, social media, press releases and funding applications. If you do not wish to be photographed, please inform an event organizer.

Questions? Contact Professor Candy Brown, 812-269-2710, browncg@iu.edu.

Find out more about:

Tournament Information

Congressional Debate

• For Teachers
• Judge Guide

 

Honorary Chief Judge: Professor Dawn Johnsen

We are honored that Dawn Johnsen, Walter W. Foskett Professor of Law Emerita at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, will serve as Honorary Chief Judge. Interim Executive Dean Caroline Chick Jarrold will introduce Professor Johnsen at the Founding Documents Forum (3:45–4:45 p.m., Woodburn Hall 100), and Professor Johnsen will present awards at the closing ceremony (5:00 p.m., Woodburn Hall 100).

Professor Johnsen has taught constitutional law at Maurer since 1998, with a focus on the separation of powers, presidential power, and civil liberties. She has served extensively in the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)—the vital office that advises the President, the Attorney General, and the executive branch on complex questions of constitutional law.

She served under President Clinton as Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Acting Assistant Attorney General (1993–1998), receiving the Department's Edmund J. Randolph Award for Distinguished Service. President Obama nominated her to lead the OLC in 2009, and she recently returned to government under President Biden, serving as Acting Assistant Attorney General and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the OLC (2021–2024). Throughout her career, she has been a leading scholarly voice on ensuring that executive branch legal advice remains objective and grounded in the Constitution.

A summa cum laude graduate of Yale College and a graduate of Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, she clerked for Judge Richard D. Cudahy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Her extensive writing on the rule of law, war powers, and the President's duty to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" goes to the very heart of the founding documents this tournament celebrates. Students, families, and judges will have an incredible opportunity to hear from her and ask questions at the Founding Documents Forum.

Topics, motions, and dockets

Public Forum (HS Novice and Varsity): NSDA September/October 2026 topic. Resolved: The United States federal government should enact a moratorium on hyperscale data center construction.

Lincoln-Douglas (HS Novice and Varsity; Middle School LD): NSDA September/October 2026 topic. Resolved: Outer space colonization is a moral imperative.

Policy (HS Novice and Varsity): NSDA 2026-2027 resolution. Resolved: The United States federal government should establish national health insurance in the United States. Novice Policy follows ISSDA novice rules: no counterplans, no kritiks, no topicality arguments.

World Schools (HS Novice and Varsity): two prepared motions from the ISSDA October/November 2026 list, no impromptu round. Sides will be balanced so that, as far as pairings allow, each team argues Proposition once and Opposition once on each motion.

• Rounds 1 and 2 (switch sides): This House would ban standardized testing for university admissions.
• Rounds 3 and 4 (switch sides): This House would replace lifetime appointments for supreme court or constitutional judges with single, non-renewable 15-year terms.

World Schools (Middle School): Rounds 1 and 2 (switch sides) on the prepared motion, This House would replace lifetime appointments for supreme court or constitutional judges with single, non-renewable 15-year terms. The 12:45 p.m. round block is preparation time for an impromptu motion, which will be released with pairings and sides at the start of that block; the impromptu debate is Round 3, in the 2:15 p.m. block.

Congress (HS Novice and Middle School): six items from the ISSDA September/October 2026 docket, debated in this order, two per session. Session 1: (8) A Bill to Make Full-Day Kindergarten Mandatory; (12) A Bill to Impose a Temporary Moratorium on New Artificial Intelligence Data Centers. Session 2: (10) American Manufacturing Security Act; (6) A Resolution to Amend the Constitution to Adjust the Presidential Line of Succession. Session 3: (9) A Bill to Abandon the Artemis Program; (7) A Bill to Return Federal Lands to Indigenous Peoples.

Congress (HS Varsity): eight items from the same docket, debated in this order. Session 1: (8) Full-Day Kindergarten; (12) AI Data Center Moratorium; (10) American Manufacturing Security Act; (2) A Bill to End the Ukraine War. Session 2: (6) Presidential Line of Succession; (9) Abandon the Artemis Program; (7) Return Federal Lands to Indigenous Peoples; (1) A Bill to Bar the Sale of Arms to the United Arab Emirates.

The full text of all Congress legislation is posted at candygbrown.com/tournament; the Congress docket is also on the ISSDA website.

 

(vr24)