The National Parliamentary Debate Invitational

Hosted by Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley

November 16-17, 2024

IN PERSON @ UC BERKELEY (again!)

If you're interested in being hired to judge for the NPDI, please fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScBKsn12vOXNErWyzgnggBnO7n4fqxebP0Z67d9KEBB3WBWbw/viewform

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Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley cordially invites you to participate in the fall semester’s premier parliamentary debate tournament, the National Parliamentary Debate Invitational, on November 16 and 17, 2024.

This tournament places a premium on providing a unique educational experience for all participants. It will feature an Open division and a Junior Varsity (JV) division, with each division guaranteed five preliminary rounds. We will break brackets in elims on school affiliation. All Open division rounds will be adjudicated by individuals holding a background in high school and/or college parliamentary debate. Following the conclusion of each round, judges will disclose the victor of the round and provide a constructive oral RFD of no more than 15 minutes in length.

There will be one topic area, TBA no later than 1 month before the tournament, which will be used for at least one prelim round. The topic committee will consist of current and former members of the PDB team.

We'd like to hold a mandatory equity forum on Saturday directly after lunch, discussing issues relating to accessibility in the debate space. If you'd be interested in panelling for the equity forum, please contact us at calparli@gmail.com.

REQUIRED FORMS:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SETzcUrBk_RWqJI1lzcNZ7HQCKp1xvog?usp=sharing

Please have each participant and their parent fill out both forms, and email (preferably as a school) to calparli@gmail.com by Friday, November 15th.

Entry Limit:

The entry limit per school is 8 entries per division; if, for whatever reason, you feel that an exception should be made, please email calparli@gmail.com. We can accommodate not more than 120 entries between both divisions.

Hybrid and Independent Eligibility:

We do allow hybrid and independent entries, just notify tournament administration about them before the entry deadline, by sending an email to calparli@gmail.com.

Junior Varsity Eligibility:

To compete in the Junior Varsity division, debaters must have no more than two years of prior debate experience.

Judge Requirements:

Each school will be required to provide 1 qualified judge for every two entries or fraction thereof. A single open-qualified judge can cover both an Open and a JV entry.

Open: A qualified judge is at least a high school graduate or equivalent AND a coach or former open debater. Experience in debate events outside of parliamentary debate is accepted. Any questions about what characterizes a qualified judge should be directed to calparli@gmail.com. Judges found to not meet judging qualifications will be removed from the judge pool, and schools will be charged relevant fees.

Junior Varsity: Anyone who is at least a high school graduate (or equivalent). Do not have to have debate experience, but they can. Anyone who satisfies the above Open requirements is also qualified to judge JV.

ALL judges will be required to provide a paradigm by Thursday, November 14, 2024, and judges are highly encouraged to give an oral Reason For Decision after the round.

Additionally, due to delays caused by ballot distribution in the past, we require that ALL JUDGES have individual Tabroom accounts set up prior to the tournament. The tournament will be using online ballots only.

Tournament Announcements:

Tournament-wide announcements, such as topics for each round, will be posted on this document:[]

We will also announce topics in the main auditorium (Dwinelle 155).

Announcements regarding tournament logistics may be emailed to registered schools via Tabroom.

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Payment & Fees Tournament Fees:

The cost of competing in the 2024 NPDI will be $150 per entry.

Any drops after November 13, 2024 will be assessed the full entry fees.

Schools may choose to pay an additional hired judge fee of $300.00 per uncovered entry.

Payment:

Payments should be made through PayPal to the account associated with calparli@gmail.com by end-of-day November 15, 2024. Email us if you have questions about payment logistics.

• Invoices will be managed directly through Tabroom this year. You can view fees due and access your invoice under the “Fees” header when viewing your tournament registration.
  
  

• Please write in the notes/title of the payment: [School - NPDI Entry Fees Payment]
  
  

• If you need an invoice directly from Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley, email calparli@gmail.com to request one, no later than November 12, 2024. Please ensure that all entries and judges are finalized before making this request.
  
  

• If penalties are imposed for missing judges/paradigms, those will be added to Tabroom invoices during the tournament. All schools should check the “Fees” section after the tournament and pay any outstanding dues.
  
  

• If you have any questions, contact calparli@gmail.com.
  
  

Judge Penalty:

If a team's judge misses any rounds, the team will be charged $50.00 for each missed round: we will drop the judge from the pool and assess relevant fees for missing 3 rounds. This does not apply to teams that have hired judges from the tournament.

Schools will be charged $50.00 for every judge without an individual Tabroom account linked to their judge entry by the start of the tournament. A team-wide Tabroom account that the judge has access to is NOT sufficient; they must have an individual account and a paradigm.

Fee Breaks:

Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley is firmly committed to expanding accessibility of debate. If our fees are financially prohibitive, please contact us at calparli@gmail.com. We tend to be very generous in awarding fee breaks, but we cannot help you if you do not contact us first. We expect that any team receiving a fee break will cover their entries with qualified judges.

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Competitor Rules

1. Prep Time:

During the twenty-five (25) minutes of prep time, debaters may hand-write arguments to bring into round, and they may consult whatever resources they would like. Printed materials, computers, phones, digital files, and Internet access are all allowed. They may not communicate with coaches and teammates, and especially may not pre-prepare writing to bring into round.

Debaters should cease prepping once prep time has elapsed, even if the first flight has not concluded. Judges may dock running time from a late team's first constructive: teams are expected to be at their room by the end of prep. Dwinelle Navigator is a useful resource for finding a room: we expect all rooms this year to be in Dwinelle Hall.

We will drop ballots and possibly the entry if we find an entry beyond a reasonable doubt violated of any prep-related rules.

Exceptions to these requirements can be made for the purposes of accessibility accommodations; email calparli@gmail.com to notify us of any specific accommodations we should account for. Potential rules violations will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis by the tournament staff.

2. In-Round Materials:

During each round, debaters may only utilize handwritten notes that they or their partner wrote during that round’s twenty-five (25) minutes of prep time. They may not access any notes that were prepared prior to that round’s topic announcement. They may not access any printed materials, or any notes that were hand-written or typed by a coach or other teammates.

Exceptions to these requirements can be made for the purposes of accessibility accommodations; email calparli@gmail.com to notify us of any specific accommodations we should account for. Potential rules violations will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis by the tournament staff.

3. Speech Times:

Speech times for all rounds will be 7-8-8-8-4-5. There is no protected time in any speech. There are no grace periods.

4. Rebuttals:

No new arguments may be made in the rebuttal speeches.

Points of order are allowed in rebuttals. Points of order stop time.

5. Flex Time:

This tournament will utilize flex time, which is a small window of time before certain speeches that allows debaters to ask questions of the other team, consult their partner, and/or prepare arguments.

Flex time occurs during the round at the following intervals:

• 2 minutes of neg flex before the LOC
  
  

• 2 minutes of aff flex before the MG
  
  

• 1 minute of neg flex before the MO
  
  

• 1 minute of aff flex before the PMR
  
  

The team controlling flex is allowed to ask questions of the other team, but not the other way around. For example, during the neg flex before the LOC, the negative team may ask questions of the affirmative.

Please note that there is no flex time in between the MO and the LOR.

Debaters aren't required to use their flex time if they don't want to. They don't have to ask questions for the entire time or prep for the entire time; it's up to them.

We recognize that there is inevitably transition time between speeches for roadmaps, text passing, paper organizing, and such; but we ask that debaters move efficiently and especially do not prep steal/partner communication steal/pen time steal between flex and speeches: flex provides ample time to serve all of these functions.

Schedule

*Tentative Schedule, subject to change:

November 16, 2024

8:00 AM-8:30 AM: Registration

8:30 AM Topic Announcement, Round 1, Flight 1

9:25 AM Topic Announcement, Round 1, Flight 2

11:00 AM Topic Announcement, Round 2, Flight 1

11:55 PM Topic Announcement, Round 2, Flight 2

1:00 PM—2:00 PM Lunch

2:00 PM—3:00 PM Equity Forum

3:00 PM Topic Announcement, Round 3, Flight 1

3:55 PM Topic Announcement, Round 3, Flight 2

5:30 PM Topic Announcement, Round 4, Flight 1

6:25 PM Topic Announcement, Round 4, Flight 2

November 17, 2024

8:00 AM Topic Announcement, Round 5, Flight 1

8:55 AM Topic Announcement, Round 5, Flight 2

10:45 AM Topic Announcement, Elim 1

12:00 PM—1:30 PM Lunch/Awards

1:30 PM Topic Announcement, Elim 2

3:15 PM Topic Announcement, Elim 3

5:00 PM Topic Announcement, Elim 4

6:45 PM Topic Announcement, Elim 5

Past Results

NPDI I

September 8-9, 2012

Champions: Saratoga Agrawal & Chiang

Finalists: Bishop O'Dowd Accinelli & Perl

NPDI II

November 16-17, 2013

Champions: Dougherty Valley Konath & Wang

Finalists: Bishop O'Dowd Walsh & Zepeda

NPDI III

November 15-16, 2014

Champions: Dougherty Valley Bhargava & Ziaee

Finalists: Sonoma Academy Maciorowski & Kornfein

NPDI IV

November 14-15, 2015

Champions: Evergreen Valley Abushama & Cochinwala

Finalists: Campolindo Hanvey & Moore

NPDI V

November 12-13, 2016

Champions: Sonoma Academy Kornfein & Saxena

Finalists: Evergreen Valley Zielinski & Shukla

NPDI VI

November 11-12, 2017

Co-Champions: The Nueva School Keller & Poler

Co-Champions: The Nueva School Rossi & Sharma

NPDI VII

November 10-11, 2018

Champions: Campolindo Bonet & Yuan

Finalists: The Nueva School Shahar & Xu

NPDI VIII

November 9-10, 2019

Champions: Menlo-Atherton Bodnick & Nori

Finalists: Quartz Canyon Prep Frazer & Brashears

NPDI IX

November 14-15, 2020

Champions: Papaya Valley Mani & Sharma

Finalists: Campolindo Ravikumar & Kenderski

NPDI X

November 13-14, 2021

Co-Champions: Nueva Sachdev & Jonker, Mountain View/Los Altos Chatwin & Liou

NPDI XI

November 12-13, 2022

Champions: Los Altos Chatwin & Liou

Finalists: Washington Jain & Gandhi

NPDI XII

November 11–12, 2023

Co-Champions: Papaya Valley Mahalingam & Zhang, Los Altos Pai & Park