2024 UC Berkeley Asia Online Invitational
Hosted by Berkeley Debate
November 8-10, 2024

tournament@berkeleydebate.com

Greetings,

This is your formal invitation to the 2024 UC Berkeley Asia Online Invitational Speech & Debate Tournament, to be held November 8-10, 2024.

This tournament is online only. Our intent is to offer robust competition in both debate and speech events, with a schedule and topics friendly to those debating in Asian timezones. Entries are welcome from all countries/schools, but please note that the tournament is being held in China Standard Time, so may not be practical for you depending on your location.

We plan to offer divisions of Public Forum (both US and China topics), World Schools, Parli, and Original Oratory. We reserve the right to cancel divisions/events based on insufficient entries.

All divisions will receive a signed certificate of participation referencing UC Berkeley.

We plan to have special judges provided for final rounds, e.g. debaters from the UC Berkeley debate team, UC Berkeley professors or alumni, etc. Details TBD.

We plan to hold competition on NSDA Campus where possible. If you have specific needs for a different competition platform, please contact us in advance to discuss options.

Entry Procedures and Payment

All entry is done via Tabroom. If you are unable to use Tabroom for entry or payment due to limitations in your country, please contact us for assistance with manual entry or payment. If you require any documentation for entry (e.g. a signed letter of invitation), please contact us.

We do not accept paper checks. To enter the tournament you will need to pay online. You can either pay online via your Fees tab on Tabroom, using either a credit card or an e-check/ACH, or using the following link which also accepts many electronic wallet options:

Pay Here

See your Tabroom invoice on the “Fees” tab of your entry for additional payment details. Note that credit card transactions may automatically have a 4% handling fee added to your invoice.

All entries, accompanied by fees, must be received by November 1st, 2024 in order to be considered for entry into the tournament. Unpaid entries will be dropped from the tournament after November 1st.

Events and Divisions

We plan to offer the following online events:

Public Forum (China Topic)

Public Forum (US Topic)

World Schools

Parliamentary

Original Oratory

There will be 6 preliminary rounds of PF and Worlds, and 4 preliminary rounds of Oratory.

No double entry is allowed.

Tentative schedule (all times China Standard Time)

Friday 5:00p Debate Round 1

Friday 7:30p Debate Round 2

Saturday 8:00a Debate Round 3 / IE Round 1

Saturday 11:00a Debate Round 4 / IE Round 2

Saturday 2:00p Debate Round 5 / IE Round 3

Saturday 5:00p Debate Round 6 / IE Round 4

Sunday 7:30a Elim 1

Sunday 10:30a Elim 2

Sunday 1:30p Elim 3

Sunday 4:30p Elim 4

Topics

The Public Forum (Asia Topic) division will use the topic:

Resolved: Cities in China should substantially increase their support for the adoption of autonomous vehicles.

The Public Forum (US Topic) division will use the NSDA Nov/Dec topic (Taiwain/ICBM's).

World Schools topics will be announced before the tournament.

Rules

We expect attendees to abide by the NSDA's Harassment and Discrimination Policy:

https://www.speechanddebate.org/harassment-discrimination-policy/

Judge Commitments

Judge commitments for each event are listed as part of your Tabroom entry. Note that judges may not double enter events.

All judges are committed through the first elim on Sunday, or one round beyond the elimination of your teams, whichever is later. Even if your school doesn’t have any teams in elimination rounds, your judges are still committed through the first elimination round on Sunday.

If you have debaters in the elimination rounds, you must provide at least one judge per entry that is available to judge in the elimination rounds. Failure to provide adequate judging to cover your entries in elimination rounds will result in dropping your entries.

Fines

The penalty for a judge failing to report to an assigned round is $100 per round. This fine is assessed even when a replacement judge is found.

All entry fees and any other penalties/fines must be paid in full before a team will be allowed to advance to the elimination rounds (or the next elim).

Decision Times

Decision times will be strictly enforced. PF rounds must be decided fifty five minutes after the announced start time.

Eligibility

Independent entry is allowed, however, all independent entries must have the word "Independent" in the name of their Tabroom school on their tournament registration. Independent entries may not represent themselves as affiliated with a school.

Maverick Entries

Maverick teams are not permitted to enter prior to the tournament. If a team becomes maverick due to illness of a partner during the tournament, the ill debater may miss no more than 2 debates to be able to return and continue debating. Mavericks may win the debate. Mavericks will not be permitted to clear to elimination rounds.

We look forward to hosting you!

Nathan Fleming

Director, Berkeley Debate