West Bloomfield Debate Invitational

October 5th, 2024
You and your team are invited to attend the West Bloomfield high school Debate Invitational hosted by West Bloomfield HS

Some of the important information is as follows:

Location: We are excited to be back to hosting an in person debate tournament at West Bloomfield high school, located at 4925 Orchard Lake road, West Bloomfield, MI 48323. All tournament activities will be online via tabroom.com. PLEASE BE SURE ALL PARTICIPANTS HAVE AN ACTIVE TABROOM.COM ACCOUNT.

Registration: Registration will be open on TABROOM.COM by Tues. Sept. 3rd, and will close on Wednesday OCTOBER 2ND, 2024 AT 5:00 PM

Divisions: An open division is being offered in Congressional and Policy debate, if entries warrant there will be a novice and open division in public forum. If there are not enough teams to fill a division we reserve the right to combine. No maverick entries will be accepted. There are no separate Middle School Divisions unless there are enough entries to warrant a separate division. You may enter Middle Schoolers but they will be competing within the high school divisions. All debate events are dependent on having enough entries as well. We will run a policy round robin as long as there are enough entries to run one.

-Policy will be Saturday only and a preset round robin tournament

-Public Forum will be Saturday only. As long as entries permit there will be an open and novice division (will be combined if number of entries warrant)

-Congressional will be Saturday only

Format: Policy-4 round preset round robin

Public Forum--4 prelims and elims based on entries. The first two rounds will be pre-set all others will be power

Congressional—2 preliminary sessions, one Super session

Policy topic::: Resolved: The United States federal government should significantly strengthen its protection of domestic intellectual property rights in copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks

Public forum topic: Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially expand its surveillance infrastructure along its southern border.

Congressional Legislation: Bills will be due Tuesday September 24th 2024 at 5 pm (email them to the address below)t. Legislation will be available on tabroom by that Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.

Detroit Urban Debate League and Detroit Catholic Debate League

DUDL and DCFL member schools should register in either the public forum or policy divisions, or both if they have teams in both PF and policy.

PF will use the national PF resolution for Sept./Oct. 2024 on increased border surveillance of the southern border.

Entry fees are waived for DUDL schools only. Schools/teams which compete ONLY in the DCFL will owe full fees.

Students who debate in the DUDL and DCFL will have to pay for their own breakfasts, snacks and lunches.

Novice policy debaters must use only the evidence and arguments found in the NDCA novice packet. This applies only if there are enough teams to run separate open and novice policy divisions.

Judges:All judges are required to judge one round beyond the elimination of their team from the tournament. Thus, all judges must be available for the first elimination round.

PLEASE IDENTIFY ALL JUDGE PRECLUSIONS AND CONFLICTS ON YOUR ENTRY. Because this is an online tournament you may have multiple judges fulfilling your commitment, do this for all judges.

PLEASE BE VERY DILIGENT IN SPECIFYING TIME FRAMES FOR JUDGE AVAILABILITY. No show fee of $25 per round charged to the school.

POLICY AND PUBLIC FORUM--You must supply one judge for every 2 teams or fraction thereof.

CONGRESSIONAL—You must supply one judge for every 10 competitors entered.

Please request hired judges via tabroom registration. Judge fees for Policy are 100, PF, and Congressional are $90 for a full judge.

Fees: $25.00 per 2-person Public Forum team.

$45.00 per 2-person Policy team.

$10.00 per student for Congressional debate

Payments should be mailed to West Bloomfield High School and made by check
MAKE CHECKS PAYABLE TO: West Bloomfield Debate

Send checks to: Attention: Joel Thursam

West Bloomfield high school

4925 Orchard Lake Road

West Bloomfield MI 48323

Please make an effort to have check mailed out by Friday Oct. 4th (if there is a reason for a delay please contact me directly)

Important dates:

October 2nd , 5:00pm—Registration closes—all fees and judge obligations are frozen

October 4th , all fees (if not paid in person) must be mailed out and sent to West Bloomfield high school

Forfeit: We will use a 15-minute rule for competitors and judges. If you are more than 15 minutes late you risk forfeit for that round. Teams of offending judges will forfeit and hired judges will not be paid if they are late. Please relay the importance of timeliness to your students and your judges.

Contact information: Please direct all correspondence to Joel Thursam

Joel.thursam@wbsd.org Email is the best

586-292-4429 Cell Phone (this is a new number)

ADDITIONAL TOURNAMENT INFORMATION: Additional information will be available in downloadable format on tabroom.com at a future date. Check back later. We will email those entered once information is posted.