06. Judge Training Requirement

Sufficient adjudication is a crucial part of any successful tournament. As active members of the community, we understand the desire for experienced, qualified judges. We also understand that different circuits, whether at the local or national level, have various conceptions of what counts as a “qualified judge.” In an effort to respect this diversity of opinion while preserving the integrity of our judging pool, we have several requirements of our judges, as outlined below. All requirements must be met for a judge to count towards a school’s obligation. Any school whose judges do not meet these requirements will lose preference sheet privileges in that event.

All judges are required to complete the “Intro to Multicultural Competence” course that can be found on NSDA Learn. Additionally, judges should complete the “Intro to Judging Debate” training and the training corresponding to the event they are judging. For example, if Jane Doe is judging in Lincoln-Douglas Debate, she should complete the “Judging Lincoln-Douglas Debate” training on NSDA Learn. All trainings are free and should take no longer than an hour or so. Links to each individual training can be found below:

• Judging Policy Debate

• Judging Lincoln-Douglas Debate

• Judging Public Forum Debate

• Judging World Schools Debate

You can find a step-by-step guide to certify your judge training here.

Judges who have not completed their judge or event training, but feel they are sufficiently qualified to judge their event may email the tournament to consider waiving the requirement. Most judges that have experience judging their event will have this requirement waived. First-year outs are not eligible for this exception. All judges must still complete the multicultural training.

Judges may self-identify as diversity-enhancing to assist the tournament in reaching its equity goals. We will endeavor to ensure that each elimination round panel has at least one diversity-enhancing judge.

All judges are expected to have a tabroom account and paradigm. Schools with judges without a paradigm will not have access to preference sheets and will not have that judge count towards their obligation. It is the obligation of coaches to make sure their judges are familiar with tabroom.