Dear Colleagues,

The University of North Texas William DeMougeot Debate Forum and the Department of Communication Studies at UNT are pleased to invite you to attend the 11th Annual John S. Gossett Memorial High School Speech & Debate Tournament this October 30-31, 2020. This year's tournament will be hosted virtually on the NSDA Campus platform.

Policy Debate will have 3 preliminary rounds before going into thee elimination rounds. Public Forum and Lincoln-Douglas will have 4 preliminary rounds before going into thee elimination rounds. Congress will have Prelims and Finals on Friday. Congressional Debate will run on a schedule that allows Congressional Debate entries to enter all Individual Events.

We are excited to offer a World School Debate division. World School Debate motions can be found at www.txfa.org

The LD topic will be the NSDA topic for September/October.

The CX topic will be the high school 2020-2021 Policy topic.

The PFD topic will be the NSDA topic for September/October.

The motions for Worlds:

Round one: This House would provide a universal basic income.

Round two:  This House believes that Russian containment is a priority for geopolitical stability.

Semis: This House would replace human judgement with computer algorithms in criminal sentencing decisions.

The Congressional Debate legislation can be found at www.txfa.org and we will be using the Fall 2020 Legislative Docket.

Legislation will be debated as follows (order to be determined by chamber):

Preliminary Round:  3, 7, 8, 14, 20, 28, 30

Finals: 4, 12, 17, 28

Policy, Public Forum and Lincoln-Douglas debate may enter IE events EXCEPT FOR extemporaneous speaking and impromptu speaking. Brackets will not be broken in any debate event.  We are planning to have panels in elimination rounds, if possible. For IE, Duo, and Duet, we will have 8 in finals for the events that meet the TFA standard for 8 in a final round.

We will beoffering HI, DI, USX, FX, OO, DUO, POI, INFO, PROSE, IMPROMPTU and POETRY.  All individual events (sans extemporaneous speaking and Impromptu) will be asynchronous. Video links will need to be submitted on Tabroom.com by Tuesday, October 27, 2020 by 9pm.Asynchronous prelims will be conducted Friday night. Finals will be asynchronous and judged on Saturday. Extemporaneous speaking and Impromptu will take place on Saturday, October 31st,2020.   

Should you have any questions regarding tournament logistics, please contact, Louis Petit. He can be reached by email – louis.petit@unt.edu

Thank you for joining us, and please let us know if there is anything we can do to make your experience more enjoyable.

Best Regards,

Dr. Brian Lain, Director of Debate

Louis Petit, Associate Director of Debate

Colin Quinn, Student and Program Coordinator