2024 NPDL Nationals & Novice Nationals on March 8-10th, 2024

The National Parliamentary Debate League is pleased to invite you to the NPDL Nationals & Novice Novice Nationals Tournament, an online high school parliamentary debate championship open to teams from across the United States.

Topics
The topic area for at least one preliminary round will be Environmental Policy in Southeast Asia.

Contact
npdl.board+nationals@gmail.com

Finances
Entry Fee: $88 per team

Independent Entry / Non-NPDL Member School Fee: $50 per team (in addition to the entry fee)

Hired judging: $125 per uncovered team

Fees may be paid online or by check payable to the National Parliamentary Debate League, and mailed to:

Rodda John
257 Gold St. Apt 8B
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Checks should indicate the school name.

Schools for which payment is a barrier to entry should request a full or partial fee waiver by emailing npdl.board+nationals@gmail.com

If your payment will not arrive by the March 6 deadline (see below), please email npdl.board+nationals@gmail.com and CC npdl.board+treasurer@gmail.com by March 6 requesting an extension and specifying when your payment will arrive.

Deadlines
Registration closes: Friday, March 1, 11:59PM (Pacific)
Hired judge requests due: Friday, March 1, 11:59PM (Pacific)
Entry fees & judge obligations frozen: Friday, March 1, 11:59PM (Pacific)
Judges entry due: Tuesday, March 5, 11:59PM (Pacific)
Forms due for all participants: Tuesday, March 5, 11:59PM (Pacific) - see sidebar
Entry/judge fee payment must arrive by: Wednesday, March 6, 11:59PM (Pacific) - see above
Membership registration deadline (to avoid the $50 non-member fee): Wednesday, March 6, 11:59PM (Pacific)
Judge strikes due: Thursday, March 7, 5:00PM (Pacific)

Eligibility
- Every school may enter up to 10 teams in open and 10 teams in novice. Any additional teams will be waitlisted.
- Only high school teams are eligible.
- Hybrid entries are allowed.
- All students must be registered under their school or designated as “[SCHOOL NAME] Independent.” Hybrid teams of students from different schools should be registered using both school names.
- A homeschooled debater who affiliates with a member school is exempted from the $50 non-member fee.

Mavericks
- Ordinarily, both partners should debate in every round.
- In unusual circumstances where one partner is ill, has technological problems, or otherwise unavailable, the other partner may compete as a maverick in prelims.
- If a team mavericks for more than one prelim, they cannot break.
- The missing partner will be assigned 24 speaker points for the round.
- Mavericks may not compete in elimination rounds.

Divisions
- There will be two divisions - Open and Novice.
- A novice debater is a freshman or a sophomore who is in their first academic year of debate competition.
- A freshman or sophomore in their second academic year of debate competition may also enter as a novice if they have competed in no more than three debate tournaments total.
- A novice team is composed of two novice debaters.

Judges

The judge requirement is 1 judge per 2 entries.
The judge ratio is rounded up.
The judge requirement is calculated separately for Open and Novice.
For example, 3 Open entries and 5 Novice entires would be covered by a total of 5 judges (2 for Open, 3 for Novice).

All schools must cover their full judge obligation for prelims, doubles, and octas. In addition, all Sunday judges from a given school are obligated for one round past the elimination of the last team from their school.

Each team may strike up to 2 judges.

A judge must:
- be fluent in English,
- be familiar with the basic rules of parliamentary debate,
- have a device with a working camera and audio,
- have experience using video conferencing,
- be at least 18 years old and not be a current high school student,
- be reachable at all times by phone while they are in the judge pool.

After submitting their ballots, judges may - but are not required to - give a brief RFD (reason for decision) and/or disclose the winner of the round. Judges on a panel should decide independently, and not confer with other judges about the result before all judges have submitted their ballots.

Round Rules
We will use the NPDL Round Rules.
Internet allowed in prep only, partner prep only, 20 minutes prep time, no grace period, no citations, POIs/POOs/POCs allowed

Awards
Awards will be mailed to all debaters who advance to elimination rounds. When registering on Tabroom, you will be asked to provide a mailing address for refunds. This will be the address your awards will be mailed to. You may provide the school address - or the address of one of your coaches or debaters. That person will then be responsible for distributing the awards to the other people in your school.

Fines
All fines must be cleared before elimination rounds are announced. Nuisance fines will be assessed for the following:
$50 fine - Team does not submit entry fees or hired judge fees prior to the posted deadline (if applicable)
$50 fine - Team has a judge add or change after the posted judge deadline
$50 fine - Team’s judge is more than ten minutes late to a round
$50 fine - Team’s judge requires tab staff intervention to set up or link a Tabroom.com account
$100 fine - Team’s judge misses a single round
$300 fine - Team’s judge is missing for more than one round (stacks on previous fine)

Tabulation
See sidebar

Schedule
See sidebar

Staff
Click here to apply.

Hired Judges
Click here to apply.

Meeting of Members
The NPDL Meeting of Members will be held on Sunday, March 10, 1-2PM (Pacific Time), i.e. 4-5PM (Eastern Time).
The Zoom link and other details will be sent to all member school representatives.

Short URL
npdlnationals.tabroom.com