how do you guys interpret the topic? i am completely lost.

My school has really mid backfiles for prog stuff and I was wondering if there was a compiled backfile download somewhere? I know i could download every k file from openev but that would take forever. I have a lot of a/2 theory but it is really messy and i have like 4 massive files and like 5 smaller. Thanks!

hello.I was selected for a debate competition by my teacher.I thought it was a small event with just school students but I was informed that participants from several schools are coming and principals are going to be the judges.I am very nervous and I have social anxiety,I stutter even when talking to family and friends.what should I do? The debate is on 10the Dec,I can't withdraw my name.

Sorry for bad English

Moving forward, Outreach Debate will begin releasing evidence briefs for each topic for Public Forum and Lincoln-Douglas. We hope that this will provide a quality starting point for topic research.

With that, I’m attaching the evidence brief here for the PF November-December Topic (Taiwan). If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to contact us!

You can find the evidence brief here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FRk7V4w99rzb5hUk2\_YcApBKYPfzPRNy/view?usp=sharing

Me personally, I believe that the 1NC is more of a time crunch than the 1AC. the AC is completely scripted while in the NC, you basically have to either shorten your case which can reduce it’s effectiveness in order to respond to 6 minutes of arguments or lengthen your case but only have 2 minutes to respond to 6 minutes of arguments. And you cannot make new arguments in the 2NR so it is nearly impossible to deconstruct the 1AC effectively without running out of time.

That’s why adding an extra section where the neg can refute is the best case scenario as it can allow the neg to focus on refuting in the next speech rather than reading your case AND refuting aff case. Here’s the new format

1AC - 6 minutes cross examination- 3 min 1NC - 6 Minutes cross examination - 3 minutes 1NR - 4 minutes 1AR - 4 minutes 2NR - 6 minutes 2AR - 3 minutes

i know neg gets more time to speak but it’s better than having 2 minutes to refute 6 minutes.

it’s probably a “bad idea” and a “skill issue” but it’s my opinion. lemme know your (respectful) thoughts.

hi! where is everyone printing out large photos for their boards. Walgreens poster boards are quite expensive so I was wondering where and what type of prints you guys are using

Hi, I'm a freshman and novice to congressional debate and have only gone to a few tournaments. If any experienced congress debater who has competed on the nat circuit is willing to coach me I would greatly appreiciate it. Please dm if you are interested.

I’m coaching HI for the first time this year. One of my students is curious about if they could do an episode of a TV show for their piece, is this allowed? The pieces script is available online and my understanding is that is the only guideline but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen somebody do an episode of a TV show before. Thanks in advance

how do you guys prepare information for dockets released? do you organize it on a google doc? find affirmative and negation articles? i’m stuck on doing this since i just started the event

I run a Discord server, we focus on mainly other aspects of debate (like prep-work) but we include debate spars pretty often.

The server if interested.

If anyone has suggestions on how it should be ran, please comment or send a message.

So far:

- Setting up spars up to 1 week in advance

- A specific ping for anyone signed up for spars

my cousin is a huge debater, and he's really good. i have absolutely no idea what to get him this year for christmas, and would appreciate any advice!

I booked our first tournament today. It's this weekend. I had to:

1. submit a bus request for Friday
2. submit a bus request for Saturday
3. create an NSDA account
4. tie it to my school's existing account
5. which was a problem because the prior coach didn't unregister himself so I had to get an AP to email NSDA that Prior Coach wasn't around anymore and it should be me
6. create a Tabroom account
7. have my students create Tabroom accounts
8. find out that I can see none of them in my school's Tabroom roster
9. shrug and move on for now ... this weekend ... get my students to commit to one or both days
10. get my students to choose events
11. get my students to choose texts
12. notice that for some reason, Tabroom had me tied to both my school and a high school across the district
13. try to get Tabroom help on that, because it's loading the other school's roster, not mine (still waiting)
14. email the tournament supervisor asking if he could maybe register my 2 students manually since Tabroom and NSDA aren't playing well with me (he's a righteous dude and got it done)
15. submit a purchase order for entry fees
16. but first, find the host school's W-2 on Tabroom
17. email students re ID# and grade level, since for some reason we can't look up students in PowerSchool if they aren't on our roster
18. do a student list for Friday
19. do a student list for Saturday
20. do an absence form for me, so I can get a sub for Friday after noon
21. go to the front office and get a paper form for the field trip (paper in 2024? WHY)
22. ask the drama teacher where this incomprehensible line of codes I have to enter is found
23. discover that it's in the bus request
24. chase the transportation AP all over the building to get her to sign the form
25. trot the form back up to the front office
26. beg the principal's secretary to PLEASE help me push it through because the students are excited to go
27. ... and what I'm doing right now is drafting a "man alive, I am SO SORRY this is a late request and I promise I'll get it in sooner next time" to our principal, who will be miffed that I'm doing all this so late
28. ... and also praying that he'll end up signing off on it

SO MANY MOVING PARTS. Does it get less complicated the more I do it?

Also ... How do you get your speakers to commit to events in the future? Ideally, I should be doing January's tournament requests this week or next.

Thank you all!

just curious what everyone thinks. if you had to choose one in debate which do you think is more important and why?

i know it’s kind of a dumb question but i’m trying to settle an argument between my team lol

edit: hey guys just to let you know i’m not saying one has to be better than the other, i just got this as a resolution and wanted to see everyone’s thoughts. i realize now this is probably a really bad rez 👍👍

Could someone please explain IN DEPTH how a debate works especially PF. I am a beginner and was thrown into pf with varsity members and I'm terrified.

I really want to be good at debate and even compete in competitions. at the very least, I want to be qualified enough to be president of a Debate Club at my highschool.

However, I cannot afford a debate coach or classes.

What other resources I can use or things I can do to become proficient in debate and master it? How long would it take?

My first ever novice public forum debate is this weekend, my teammate is my friend who’s literally better at everything compared to me. This morning we were talking with our coach and had a mock debate, he pretended to be on the opposing side and asked a bunch of questions. I couldn’t answer a single one but my teammate quickly fired off smart answers. I feel like i’m bringing our team down and disappointing my coach and it just made me 10 times more nervous for the tournament. I feel like this might be about more then just the tournament but my confidence is very low and I just know i’ll screw it up for the both of us. My friend is super nice and I know she won’t say anything and that makes it worse. I’ve never done good casually debating before so going into this i didn’t have high hopes but seeing how skilled my teammate is makes me want to crumble. Just need some encouragement 😭😭

Hey there! I’m looking for some help/advice on what to do here…

I am a first year debate student doing congress, novice LD, and soon novice extemp.

I am fairly good at debate, not to brag, and I placed 3rd at my first debate tournament as well as doing decent in my first two congresses. I enjoy debating and I love my team, but I have always struggled with intense anxiety (I was diagnosed with GAD 3 years ago). Debate gives me a ton of anxiety, to the point where I’m actively stressing weeks before a tournament and I’ve even thought about quitting because of it. I really don’t want to let down my team or waste my talent though, and I do enjoy debating. I really don’t know what to do at this point. Plus my coach is making me do extemp which I’m really nervous about. Anyways if anyone else has a similar experience or has any tips to handle anxiety like this, I’d love to hear it!

Thanks so much!

I'm a novice, this is my first year of debate ever, of course I'm not going to win every competition I attend, but when I'm competing in the "novice/JV" chamber and the guy next to me says in his P.O. nomination speech "I've been P.O.ing for four years" I'm sure it's easy to understand why I think its completely unfair to me, competing at my first debate tournament. Why is someone who's spent their entire highschool career in debate competing in the chamber with people who have never debated in their lives?

I ranked 5th in that chamber, but seeing how there were at least 3 people against me who weren't novices at all, I feel like I should have got a shot at the final round.

Am I the only one who cannot find cards and evidence for the neg? Like it’s genuinely stressing me out, no matter what I search up it’s all saying the opposite of what im looking for

this post is intended to be a rant as well as a warning to debaters everywhere to not let their teams get to this situation.

OV

Caption. I've essentially quit doing forensics in any serious capacity. It's a shame, because I love debate and the community I've found, and it used to be my favorite extra curricular. My team simply makes it actually impossible to enjoy the activity in any capacity.

I'm from a small east coast school team that is still relatively famous/relevant. We don't have many resources, but in the past have always managed to get by and produce extremely successful teams. However, in the past year and currently we have noticeably gone downhill. majority of our current sophomore PFers have quit from last year, even those who debated in middle school(most who quit were girls as well). PF is supposedly one of our biggest divisions. The freshmen who have joined this year are small in number and also not passionate and extremely quiet. Our speech team and LD are dwindling, the only other division is Parli which seems to be not as bad off (probably because of good leadership)

1 gatekeeping, superiority complexes, and toxicity

This has been going on since freshman year but there are two extremely vocal guys on my PF team who essentially evaluate the value of a person based off of how well they debate(lets call them H and J). If you are deemed to be bad, they will disrespect you, make fun of your skills, and continuously harass you about your rounds no matter the outcome. It wasn't as severe during freshman year as we were all novices, but it showed. they were especially harsh on one of my guy friends who ended up quitting by the end of that year (though not entirely due to their toxicity, but it definitely played a role). H and J were ring leaders but some of their other friends would join in as well.

H and J and their close friends would also gate keep the block docs, which proved to be a huge issue. They were close friends with the upperclassmen(who were surprise surprise, all male) and thus had access to the prep they had. Granted the two were good at debate but still it didn't seem fair at all. You'd work on the common block doc and write blocks that were good and everyone would use(even H and J and the uppers), but the following month you still couldn't get on the good block doc. H J would also begin to invalidate peoples successes for example by tearing apart the blocs written by certain people (even though theyve used them and hadn't said anything prior to knowing who wrote them), saying that certain people "got lucky" for certain rounds or that they were screwed in their favor. Still at this stage there were times where they were actual supportive friends so it wasnt so bad.

That summer many people weren't able to go to debate camp and thus fell behind a little. that's when the real disrespect started. during our school's summer debate school, there was someone on my team who was volunteering with H and J as instructors and didn't go to camp. They were making fun of her the entire time at camp in front of the students. constantly berating her on every mistake and stumble she would make from being out of practice. During lunch, they also would jokingly hit and physically assault her in front of the students. This incident can show their new attitude which is that they seriously will choose to not respect someone (they were friends with that girl for years!) because of how good they are at debate. As the year progressed it got worse and worse.

They will firmly refuse to share prep and block docs unless you are in their close circle (which is around 6-7 people, ALL MALE). There is one girl who was close friends with H who would get prep, but then they had a fight and she essentially lost all her "prep privileges"(which shouldn't be a thing, SHARE WITH YOUR TEAM!! be professional.)The only other girl(lets call N) on the team got continuous privileges and respect because she was better than everyone else on the team and accumulated an enormous amount of bids her freshman year. Because of this she had tons of respect but by this year was out of practice due to her partner leaving and not going to NSD. So this year, the guys began treating HER badly too, making fun of every single word she says, harassing her, hitting her, picking apart her cases and links unsolicitedly, invalidating her successes. Even socially as friends they have began to disrespect her, all because she was out of practice for debate.

Especially this one guy who joined sophomore year, S, who is honestly midtier at best but is friends with all the vocal guys on the team. J(who is really good) ditched his partner A for reasons unknown, so A(who is decent) paired with S and they do okay together. But because of this S got a huge ego and somehow believes that he is as good as or even better than N. Mind you S has broken Varsity nationals ONE TIME and even that was a struggle... meanwhile N has 8+ bids

A sophomore debater came to the uppers for prep. He said he had asked S for the block doc for an upcoming important tournament and S had said quote "sorry, the block doc is only for people who have broken nationals" ?!?!?!?! this guy is saying this to an underclassman who he should be looking out for, and he's saying this as someone who has broken ONE TIME at a national where he literally HAD the block doc for. I asked another sophomore who was friends with S and she said he had given her the block doc, no questions asked. This type of unfair treatment is so unacceptable and creates such a toxic environment. they should be looking out for underclassmen. No wonder so many people are quitting.

2 horrendous management

so many people are quitting, and its driving up our fees because theres not many people paying membership. Thus, we can only mostly afford to go to nationals and that really only benefits the 7 people in that male friend group and none of the novices, jvers, or anyone else for that matter. They dont care because they just want bids and one of the guys wants to see his out of state girlfriend(during practice he loudly talks about how much he wants to have sex with her)

Last year and this year they would be extremely unprofessional during practice and the meetings would turn into disasters. For example they loudly make inappropriate jokes, touch each other weirdly, jump ontop of each other, or throw things across the room. there was one meeting where all the guys just started chucking markers at one another while all the underclassmen looked at each other bewildered. A lot of people left after several of these "practices". While its fine in theory to joke around with your friends like they do, they're doing so with underclassmen and other people around, and it seriously makes people uncomfortable. Especially the girls, who aren't as comfortable with these loud aggressive environments. Many have left the team after seeing them act like this, as well as some guys.

Sophomores also aren't getting any opportunities to lead or teach lectures even though the current juniors (such as H and J) had such opportunities when they were their age.

Our speech division used to carry our clubs finances through their membership fees, but now they're dwindling. its being revived right now but still struggling. One sophomore PF girl is trying Speech this year as well and constantly gets made fun of for doing speech by H, which she has complained to me privately about. Joke or not that's unacceptable

3 bigotry

I'm sure throughout reading this whole thing (i applaud you) that you're noticing a pattern of misogyny and female exclusion from the junior guys. well that's the most frustrating part, is that they're assholes. They're such misogynists for all of this and they refuse to believe it or fix it. One guy, A, last year was observing a PR demo in front of the new novices. There was first of all a huge tussle over the decision on who got to debate in the PR. the guys wanted the best debaters on the team (which were all guys) while N pushed for a girl to be in the lineup to show diversity (she herself was unable to debate at the time). A was supposed to be in the PR but got swapped down for a girl. The girl made a mistake in round that they laughed at and A shouted loudly, "this is why women shouldn't debate" which was to be fair how they joked around in their own personal friend group but is still wrong. and this was infront of so many new members and girls in the audience. he was immediately shut down and berated by the seniors and his friends, but his friends really shouldn't be talking because they joke about worse things all the time.

It's so hypocritical of all of them. in their cases and in debate they constantly talk about sexual violence frameworks, racism, bigotry, misogyny, and such but dont apply any of those attitudes into real life. Their blatant disrespect to practically all female teammates aside, they're bad people. A is a cheater who constantly talks about how much he wants to have sex with his girlfriend in practice and during online tournament meetings(the team gets together for online tournaments) where people outside of his friend group are present. The other guys also include themselves on this and encourages him. They constantly make rape jokes to each other, probably in earshot of underclassmen. They hit people, even their female team mates. They make jokes about "being black" even though none of them are black.

Conclusion:

This is why I quit. I don't know how it was allowed to get this bad, and theres little I can do to help stop it. So I quit. They are hell to be around socially and with them constantly gatekeeping prep I can't improve competitively either. if you read all the way here, thank you i appreciate it. I hope others who relate will find comfort in this shared experience, though i hope no one relates.

Hey, my name is Sasan and I co-run the YouTube channel Proteus Debate Academy. I haven’t posted there much in the last couple months but I’m looking to get a bunch of stuff out in December. One video I’ve been wanting to do for a while is an interview with someone on a topic writing committee.

I’ve gotten close to making this happen a couple times, but it’s not a comfortable topic for people to talk about. As anyone on a committee like that will know, high school debate has a way more politics and backdoor shit talking than people realize. Maybe it’s not possible to talk about the topic without pointing fingers or burning bridges, so to speak, and I understand not wanting to do that.

Also, with how many posts on this sub yesterday were just various people complaining about topics, I get why it’s not appealing to go online and say “Hi everyone, I made that thing a lot of you are angry about. Here’s my name and face and where I work.”

So maybe this is a video that just isn’t gonna get made. But frankly, here’s my perspective on the issue.

Either there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the topic writing process and this is an inevitable outcome of a complex process that tries to appease a lot of people, in which case I think a chance for people to peek behind the curtain and get a better understanding of that would be helpful, or there are actual fundamental problems that aren’t being addressed, in which case not talking about it isn’t going to help the activity.

Shoot me a message or start a chat to reach out to me. I’m not in a rush and no worries if we start chatting and you decide you don’t want to do a video. All good, still friends. I just figured I’d make this post because of how many posts recent posts are talking about topics.

Hi r/debate! I'm a former PFer who graduated in 2021 and I'm currently coaching a freshman looking to make the jump from novice to varsity and wanting to attend debate camp this summer for PF. Back when I was a debater, I went to both VBI and NDF and found NDF to be the stronger camp, albeit not by a huge margin. Is NDF still a good camp? Should I recommend NSD, ISD, VBI or a different camp?

I’m acc gonna tweak bc why is the legislation getting posted today? THE TOURNAMENT IS THIS WEEKEND? There’s not enough time and I’m gonna end up writing bills in round.😭 I’m acc so stressed it’s not even funny. I’m lit abt to pass away

So, normally, I do Congress, but I thought I'd spice things up and give PF a shot. However, I was curious: could you bring up new evidence during the rebuttal to counter the other team's points?

What are some Aff and Neg arguments would you argue? Any unique arguments or general ones that have some good impacts?

I will be talking about the 2v2 coolidge format in this post

here it is:

https://coolidgefoundation.org/debate/coolidge-cup-debate-guide/

1. First Affirmative Constructive: 4 mins
2. Cross-examination: 2 mins
3. First Negative Constructive: 4 mins
4. Cross-examination: 2 mins
5. Second Affirmative Constructive: 4 mins
6. Cross-examination: 2 mins
7. Second Negative Constructive: 4 mins
8. Cross-examination: 2 mins
9. First Negative Rebuttal: 3 mins
10. First Affirmative Rebuttal: 3 mins
11. Second Negative Rebuttal: 3 mins
12. Second Affirmative Rebuttal: 3 mins

fyi coolidge is a mix between policy and ld, because it not super technical, but also passionate like ld

LD is too dependent on values, while policy is too dependent on a plan going through

coolidge is simple because it affirms/negates a resolution with prioritizing content, speaking skill, and DOES NOT FOCUS on procedural technicalities.

i just like the evidence-based argument refuting style of debate. the debate is more like irl, where people are not upholding values and stuff

thanks, id like to hear yalls thoughts on the format, and how it compares to NSDA

Hey! So I just started debate some weeks ago and am doing PF - just curious, what is the whole thing surrounding definitions, and why do you have to define stuff if people already know what you mean? (How is defining stuff helpful for any debate?)

WHY IS POLICY BEING PUT IN PF AND LD!!!!! POLICY SHOULD STAY IN POLICY!!!! fuck you mean "and/or" GET OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!