The Indiana University Hoosiers are excited to invite our colleagues back to Bloomington, Indiana for our annual Invitational tournament. We will follow ADA rules/guidelines, use the CEDA-NDT resolution and will aim for 6 preliminary debate rounds. We encourage teams to submit entries in Novice, Junior Varsity, and Varsity divisions. [Edit - the schedule has been reverted back to 6 preliminary debates as of 1/3/2024].

HOTEL INFORMATION:
Indiana Memorial Union Biddle Hotel, Block Release Date: 1/5/2024
Rate: Standard rooms per night $134 +tax per room,
Hotel GROUP Code: HIT2024
Reserve your room online or call our toll-free reservation line - 800-209-8145

Schedule

Tournament Structure

Each division will have six preliminary rounds of debate competition, with an appropriate number of elimination debates.

CEDA/ADA
The tournament will is sanctioned by the American Debate Association. The topic will be the 2023-2024 NDT-CEDA policy debate resolution:

Resolved: The United States should restrict its nuclear forces in one or more of the following ways:
-adopting a nuclear no-first use policy;
-eliminating one or more of the legs of its nuclear triad;
-disarming its nuclear forces.

Fees
In-Person: $75/participant (debates, judges, observers)
Online: $75/team

All payments will be collected through a payment portal that will be established by Indiana University Conferences. Credit cards and checks are accepted. Checks will need to be mailed.

PARKING
If you are not staying at the IMU, there are two parking lot options. The first is most convenient but more expensive on Saturday and Sunday. You should park in this lot for Monday outrounds.
1. IMU Pay parking lot, $2.50 an hour max if $28 for the day
Biddle Hotel & Conference Center, East 7th Street, Bloomington, IN

2. Atwater Parking garage - free parking Saturday and Sunday. Address:921 Atwater Ave, Bloomington, IN 47401. There is one entrance. You will need to drive East on Atwater (One way) and turn on S. Faculty Lane (One way) to access the lot.

You can walk with your students through the biology building to stay warm after crossing 3rd street and head north towards the large classroom building (Ballentine).

MONDAY - Elimination Debates
Elimination debates will be in the Tree Suites of the Indiana Memorial Union.

Definition of a Debate Team and Mavericks:
A debate team is defined as the two-person team that begins the first round of the tournament and who debate together throughout the course of the tournament. If one of the debaters of a team cannot debate in any given round, that round will be forfeited. To debate in a round is defined as to give one constructive speech and one rebuttal. Speaker points in forfeit situations will be averaged, but the team forfeiting is ineligible to clear to elimination rounds if speaker points are the determining factor for their clearing. The debate may still occur for educational purposes. However, that team will still be eligible for speaker awards and elimination rounds.

Judging

1—Judge philosophies, as a precondition of entry, must be posted to judges’ Tabroom.com accounts.

2—Judges are expected to have significant prior experience with policy debate. If a judge does not have significant prior experience with policy debate, they are not eligible to judge without prior permission from the tournament director.

3—Each school must provide 3 rounds of prelim judging per team.

4—Each judge should be entered for a minimum obligation of 2 preliminary rounds.

5—If a judge cannot be placed above the strike line for the number of debates for which they are committed, the tab room reserves the discretion to increase the commitment(s) of other judges from that judge's school.

6—Each judge is obligated through at least the first elimination debate on Monday. Judges with teams still competing are obligated a round beyond their team’s elimination. If you are hiring judging, we expect that your hired judges are part of your fulfillment of this obligation.

7—Judges are expected to judge debates assigned to them by the tournament tab room.

8—Judges are expected to adhere to Check-in and Report times. Failure to do so may result in penalties, including adjusting the school’s commitment.

9—Judges are expected to adhere to posted decision deadlines for preliminary (2:15) and elimination (2:30) debates.

10—Judges must vote for one and only one team in each debate.

11—Judges have an affirmative obligation to identify conflicts prior to the start of the tournament. Failure to do so may result in removal of preferences for the teams from the schools involved, adjustment of the judge’s schools judging obligations, and/or financial penalties.

Conflicts of interest in which a judge should preclude themselves from judging a particular team or school, and for which a team should constrain a judge, include:

a) Previous significant coaching relationship with a debater,

b) Current or previous romantic relationship with a debater,

c) Current romantic relationship with a member of the coaching staff of a school,

d) Familial relationship with a debater or member of the coaching staff of a school,

e) Recent (within the last four academic years) coaching position with a school,

f) Recent (within the last four academic years) undergraduate competitor for a school.

In-person debate tournament decorum and facility use
Debate rounds are open to registered tournament participants. Participants must follow acceptable campus use policies of Indiana University and their host institutions.

Debates may be recorded for private educational use by tournament participants. In such instances, participants should request consent. Public distribution of such recordings is expressly prohibited unless prior written consent of all individuals on the recording is obtained. Private sharing for educational use is permitted but should not include publication or posting online.

Online Debate

1—ABAP Digital Bill of Rights

We endorse the principles of the Digital Bill of Rights laid out by the Association of Black Argumentation Professionals, which can be found here: http://blackargpros.org/index.php/abaps-digital-debate-bill-of-rights/

2—Check-in Time

All participants (teams and judge) are expected to check into their room within 10 minutes of the release of the pairing. This is to facilitate everyone testing their ability to connect, for email thread set-up, setting up Zoom naming conventions, and disclosure. This means you need to log-in to the room. This will allow tournament staff to verify we have seen everyone and minimize the need for replacements or delays in the schedule. Once you have checked in, you may go off-screen or prep somewhere else as needed – you just need to come back at Report Time.

3—Report Time

We kindly request that all participants observe “Report Time” – at 10 minutes before Start Time, and report to competitions rooms at that time. You may continue to prep/coach off-screen, but in order to verify we have all participants able to access their rooms and ready to debate at start time, we need folks in their rooms and we need a little lead time to ensure we start on time. This will help minimize delays and enable tournament staff to quickly target those needing help accessing the platform/tournament/rooms or finding folks who are missing. It is a little trickier for staff to identify missing persons and start debates in our new online environment, and we ask for your cooperation to help make this work by observing Report Time.

4—Tech Time

In most instances, tech fails have been minimal (especially when folks use ethernet connections).

Most of the time tech issues can be caught quickly (you might notice a screen freeze, for example – good reason to keep screen on) and resolved without significant time spent.

If you cannot immediately reconnect, you should use a Help Ticket via the website – direct your issue to the Tech support folks (Classrooms.cloud/Zoom) option on the menu – for assistance.

In the event of a tech failure by a team, a team may use up to 10 minutes of “Tech Time”. This should be clocked by the judge, and not used as standard prep time. It is only for use with tech/connection/AV issues unique to the online format (not for setting up your email chain, e.g.).

The judge should notify the tab staff immediately via the help system if Tech Time is invoked, or if the judge has a tech issue, so that the tab staff can factor that into scheduling.

5—ADA Policy on Tech Time (Standing Rule I.1)

If debates occur utilizing an online venue, tournaments may permit each team to be allocated up to 10 minutes of “Tech Time” for resolving exclusively tech-related problems (e.g. internet connection, audio/video issues). Tech time should not be used as additional standard prep time. If the time elapses before the team can resolve the issue, they will forfeit the debate. In the event a speech needs to be redelivered entirely or in part, the time for that should count as tech time for the team experiencing the problem, if their tech time runs out while giving the speech the remaining time should be deducted from prep time. In the event a speech needs to be redelivered entirely or in part due to a judge tech issue, the judge must communicate the issue to the tab room immediately to minimize delays in the tournament schedule.

6—Outside Assistance

Once the debate has begun, a team may not receive assistance, suggestions, or coaching from anyone while the round is in progress. This does not prevent debate partners from helping one another but does prevent outside persons from helping a team during the course of a debate. In an online debate, a debate team may receive assistance at the direction of tournament staff in order to resolve technology issues with debate equipment or the ability to transmit the debate.