The University of Miami Debate Team and the UM School of Communication invite you to the Miami Oceans Debates, a civic debate style tournament to be held on April 12-13, 2025.

*Full Invitation & Topic Statement Available*-->

Topic

A 10-year moratorium on mining in the international seabed should be enacted.

Format

The Oceans Debates are an intercollegiate civic debate education program intended to be consistent with the aims of the Civic Debate Consortium.

The debates will be public in style with a goal of attracting media attention and local participation. The format and approach, therefore, is designed to be suitable for a public audience and accessible to student debaters regardless of experience. Persuasive delivery style and appropriate argument selection for non-expert audiences will be rewarded. To this end, we will use the format originated by the Lafayette Debates and adopted by the Social Justice Debates, a hybrid between intercollegiate policy and parliamentary formats, and very accessible for audience debates.

Students will compete in teams of two debaters each. Teams will be assigned to affirm or negate the topic, with each team representing the affirmative in two debates and the negative in two debates.

Each speaker will give one 6-minute speech, be cross examined for 4 minutes, and cross examine an opposing debater for 4 minutes. In addition, one speaker for each team will also give a 6-minute closing rebuttal:

1st Affirmative 6 Minutes

Cross examination by 2nd Negative Speaker, 4 minutes

1st Negative 6 minutes

Cross examination by 1st Affirmative Speaker, 4 minutes

2nd Affirmative 6 minutes

Cross examination by 1st Negative Speaker, 4 minutes

2nd Negative 6 minutes

Cross examination by 2nd Affirmative Speaker, 4 minutes

2 minutes of preparation time

Affirmative Rebuttal 6 minutes

2 minutes of preparation time

Negative Rebuttal 6 minutes

Tentative Schedule

Saturday, April 12, 2025

9:00 Registration, Breakfast, Mandatory Judge and Competitor Briefing

9:30 Round I

11:15 Round II

Lunch (provided by UM)

1:30 Round III

3:30 Round IV

5:30 Quarterfinals

Sunday, April 13, 2025

10:00 Breakfast

10:30 Semifinals

12:00 Finals

1:30 Presentation of Awards

Judging

You must provide 2 rounds of judging per team entered. All judges will be obligated through Quarterfinals. Teams may not participate if they cannot supply judging.

Community Judging

While the judges supplied by the tournament participants will serve as the judges for the preliminary debates, we plan to recruit content area experts, ocean and environmental educators, activists and professionals, and others interested in the issues related to the topic and ocean health and/or public advocacy and public speaking to serve as the judges for the semifinal and final rounds.

Fees

Fees will be $50 per person (for all debaters, coaches, judges and observers) to defray the cost of awards, rooms, breakfast on Saturday and Sunday, lunch on Saturday, and snacks

If the fees and/or judging requirements create a hardship for you, please communicate with David Steinberg (dave@miami.edu) about your situation asap. We want you to be able to participate and will work with you.

A credit card portal will be available for payment.

Hotels

We will not be arranging a block, however, you may secure UM rates at local hotels through the University Travel Site.

You must select “Leisure Hotel Rates” and create a Deem login if you do not have one already (it is free). The rates we saw were cheaper than booking directly with the hotels.

Please make your reservations as soon as possible, this is Miami. For convenience, we recommend these hotels:

AC Hotel Dadeland

Aloft Miami Dadeland

Courtyard Marriott Dadeland

Miami Marriott Dadeland

Four Points by Sheraton Coral Gables

Hampton Inn by Hilton Coconut Grove

Videos

A semifinal round and the final round of the 2023 Oceans Debates on the aquaculture topic are available on the UM Debate YouTube page.