High School Debate is a competition and a chance to prepare you for the real world at the same time. There is a high chance in real life that you will have a job that will require you to argue, defend, find, and propose solutions for many of the real problems we have in life. Whether you are an aspiring doctor, scientist, lawyer, businessman, CEO, IT computer scientist, plumber, carpenter, mechanic, engineer, politician, etc. skills you learn in debate prepare you for the vast majority of jobs in the real world. Public Speaking, teamwork, and problem-solving skills greatly improve while doing high school debate. Many of the most successful people who have ever walked this earth did debate at some point in their lifetime. That said, debate is an opportunity to learn and grow, and that you may not get it right the first time, but the important thing is to keep learning and being civil to one another!

For all congress rounds, I look for overall content, argumentation/refutation, and delivery. To go over the fundamentals of strong content and argumentation, I want to see your claim, warrant, and impact for each argument you make! Your claim should be clear and concise, and your warrants need to explain WHY and HOW your claims and data are true. For example, there is a difference between saying Drinking water is important, and Drinking water is important because according to (a source), you can’t survive more than 4 days without water. Finally, your impacts need to explain why does this matter? This is where you get to explain how this saves money and/or lives and connects it with the constituents that you are representing in the congress. This is where quantification with specific numbers and impact calculus (scope, magnitude, probability, and timeframe) become important for your fellow representative to be more bought in on your claims! How effectively you explain your impacts can make or break your speech! Always, always, always make sure to have all 3 components! If you forget one or more of them, then your speech will have quite a bit of holes in it for others to attack you!

To emphasize the importance of refutation, I look for how you interact with the congress under the present circumstances and your arguments overall. If you are not the author, sponsor, or first neg, I expect you to at least address the content already brought up and/or refute one or more of your fellow representatives. REFUTATION IS ESSENTIAL!!!! You need to have it! Without it, this isn't debate! Refutation also indicates that you are being an active listener and just makes your speech stronger by at least connecting your arguments with those already presented in the round!

Overall speech adaptation and round awareness are very important for this event. For each piece of legislation, you are essentially working as a collective group on your side to explain why your side is the side we should all pick! I am a firm believer that where you speak in the round must be well adapted to where we are in the debate! For every bill, the first 2 speeches (Authorship/Sponsorship, and 1st NEG) need to set the stage well, explain ambiguous terms, and contextualize with historical or current events! Then, the next 6-12 speeches need to be adding NEW content to the debate and back-and-forth REFUTATION! Finally, once numerous arguments and speeches have been given, your speech should be based almost entirely on refutation and should be crystalizing/consolidating arguments already brought up to convince your fellow representatives to choose your side unless you have something NEW and substantial to bring up! On this note, please avoid rehash at all costs! Rehash does nothing for a round and just wastes everyone’s time! Rehash either indicates a lack of awareness of what is going on in the round, or the unwillingness to adapt your speech to the appropriate stage in the debate!

For delivery, I would like to see eye contact, fluency, and poise throughout the speech. Being able to talk without depending on a word-for-word paper is the biggest key to mastering delivery! Practicing and learning to give speeches with simple notes and not scripts will help you in the long run. Congress and Debate in general are supposed to be dynamic events as opposed to static events. It's okay if you are one of the first 2 speakers on a bill, but after that, it’s important to be able to adapt as the round goes on and speak on the fly with simple notes and not word-for-word papers. This will also help you immensely with refutation in your speeches! To use a sports analogy, your first few plays can be scripted, but after that, you need to pull out your playbook and adjust to what the other team is throwing at you, and if you just stick to your set of pre-determined strategies no matter what, you likely will not succeed.

If you do all or most of these things mentioned above, your speech will score very high and it's a great way to ensure you have high-quality speeches! I look for overall quality over quantity! 2 home run speeches are better than 5 mediocre/bad ones! Giving the most speeches does not necessarily give you the win, and not being able to speak on a bill is not going to set you back! It’s always better to choose your spots wisely to speak. In Congress, you have a very finite amount of opportunities to speak! Therefore, it’s always better to put your best speeches on display if you can, and not waste those opportunities on sub-par speeches, but of course, some speech is better than no speech. The big picture is to just be aware of what you have prepared and be strategic when you speak. If you know that you don’t have a good speech on this bill, but you know you will for the next one, it’s wise to give your best one in that case, and know how to make that speech better next time! While it’s not the end of the world if you cannot speak on every piece of legislation due to certain circumstances, try to give a speech for the vast majority of legislation available. If you can’t speak on a bill for some reason, you can always participate in questioning to show that you are still involved in the round!

My Scoring Rubric: (Out of a 6 point NSDA rubric)

6 - Great Argumentation, Evidence, Sources, and Impacts. Well Developed-Refutation. Speech was well structured as a whole and mostly delivered without the use of a word-for-word paper. Points were original with no rehashed arguments. You used the 3 minutes well, and the speech made a great contribution to the round. Responses to questions were very prepared and professional. Also, the speech was well adapted to the appropriate stage in the debate. (This score is not easy to get, If you get one from me, you should feel very proud and expect a very good rank on your ballot).

5 - Argumentation was solid with evidence and impacts. Refutation was included and made a positive contribution to the debate. Speech was delivered solidly with minimal lapses and made an effort to make eye contact with your fellow representatives. There may be a small area or two of improvement needed in your speech that will likely earn you a 6 next time. Overall, this is a very great score and a couple of pieces of improvement will be scoring you at a 6 in no time.

4 - Speech may be missing a couple of key components such as sources, impacts, or refutation. Argumentation could be smoothed out a bit with more structure. Speech had some good components to be proud of. Speech is going in the right direction. Integrate my feedback and you should be scoring much higher in the future. Overall, this score means that you did some things well and have some improvement to do at the same time.

3 - Normally the bare minimum I give. Speech is missing a few key components. Speech may be too short, not developed enough. Argumentation may need some specific improvement. Rehash and dependence on a pre-written script may be present. Speech structure and development may be needed. Speaker may need to be more prepared to respond to questions next time.

2 - Speech had no purpose. Speaker was off-topic and made no contribution to the round. Speech may have no evidence and impacts and was just a few sparse sentences. This score normally is not given unless the speech was very sparse.

1 - Speech was given on the wrong side or speech was under a minute with no substantial information brought up. This score will also be automatically given if your speech was rude or offensive or even trying to offend another student. Any major rude or offensive behavior will result in a warning and be reported to your coach and you will not be ranked on my ballot for that tournament. PLEASE BE RESPECTFUL TO EACH OTHER!

As parliamentarian, I will look for overall decorum, parliamentary etiquette, and adherence to Robert's Rules of Order! This means taking initiative by making motions when appropriate, addressing the chamber if something is not right, and functioning as a coherent house and not just for your self-interest. Also, being attentive to the round (Taking Notes and Researching is fine) and not being a distraction in the round also factored in when evaluating overall decorum.

Also, it's your job to make motions and understand where we are in the parliamentary procedure! The PO should not have to remind you to make motions! Understanding parliamentary procedure and the order of proper motions is key to making the congress sessions very efficient! Although decorum and etiquette are not reflected in the points you earn, they can be used to help determine and nuance your final rank at the end of the session.

A note about POs

Presiding Officers have a crucially important job in each session. One could argue, the Presiding Officer is the most important student in the round because of how procedural-based Congress Debate is. Because of this, I am more than willing to rank POs anywhere on my ballot. However, PO rankings are not an entitlement by mere virtue of being the PO. I evaluate POs on how they handle Robert’s Rules of Order throughout the round as well as parliamentary procedure and should run an efficient congress. As a PO, you were chosen by your fellow representatives for a reason and you owe it to them to run an efficient congress before them. For varsity rounds in particular, make sure to practice and really know the parliamentary procedure before deciding to be PO. Ideally, the PO should be able to run the entire session with little to no help from any of the judges. This means reminding the chamber if something is wrong! It’s ok if you screw up once or twice, but overall make sure you know what you are doing! Practicing before you do it in a session of Congress is the biggest key to performing the best during a round!

Have Fun! I want to see you all succeed! Best wishes!

Please ask me before a round if you have any questions!

National Semifinalist in Congress in 2011, have been judging Congress & PF since. Experienced Congressional parliamentarian.

General

The purpose of high school debate is to learn how to analyze & weigh information and determine the best course of action, together - and in the real world, you'll be doing this with a wide variety of people from all across the spectrum of humanity. Therefore, your arguments should always be given as if presented to a layperson with zero prior background knowledge or experience. Give background, carefully explain, illustrate your warrants & impacts clearly, and explicitly tie them into your stance on the topic; ensure that any layperson listening could easily follow you to your argument's conclusion.

My job is to enter each round as a layperson, with a completely clean slate & mind, and judge who made the strongest arguments; it's not my place to bring my prior knowledge or experience into play, let alone be the arbiter of truth and correctness - it's how well you argue against the other side. If one side makes arguments that are weak, shaky, or flawed, it's up to the other side to point that out - and if they don't, those arguments may very well carry. That being said: if you make arguments that clearly don't pass the sniff test (i.e., points that to any reasonable outside observer seem to be logically sketchy, misrepresentative, or unfounded), those will count against you - so bring the evidence, cite your sources (tell me who they are, establish their credibility, and tell me why I should believe them), and back up your claims.

Finally: If you make any claim of the form "if X does/doesn't happen, then Y will/will not happen", clearly explain why & how. Never take for granted that Thing 1 happening will necessarily lead to Thing 2 happening - clearly establish that link for me and your audience, telling me why it's either certain or at least likely that this chain of events will occur.

Congress

We as a student Congress debate important issues that tangibly affect a lot of people, and you may not always be one of them. If you're truly passionate about a topic and your stance on it, speak like it. If not, that's okay: argue for the sake of ensuring that this body chooses the best course of action, and deliver your arguments clearly for that end.

(Note: this is not political theater. Your speeches aren't performance art pieces. Don't fake passion and enthusiasm or grandstand on every issue. Actual politics has enough of that already, and has become such a sh*tshow due in no small part to unauthentic, insincere people who inflame passions for votes. Don't act - when you actually care, it shows, and when you don't, it's obvious to all.)

Quality over quantity: doesn't matter how many speeches you give if you make solid, knockout arguments. For me, length doesn't matter either. No, judges can't specifically award NSDA points to a speech under 60 seconds - but who cares. Having good debate is what actually matters, and if you deliver a solid point that makes a difference in the debate, doesn't matter how many seconds it takes to deliver it - in fact, in the real world, the more concise the better.

Your goal as a Congress house is to pass legislation, to actually take action and do things and create solutions to these problems, not to just say no and point out the flaws in everything that comes across your desk (again, see our current political discourse). Use the amendment process: if a piece of legislation has flaws that can be changed, change them! If you vote against hearing or passing a given amendment, and then proceed to speak in negation of the legislation (or have earlier in the round) based on the flaw that amendment specifically addresses, you'd better give a darn good reason why you've shot down a solution to your problem.

Public Forum

Convince me. As far as I'm concerned, each team has four speeches and three cross-ex periods in which to convince me that you're right and the other side is wrong - I'm listening to all of them, and I don't particularly care what pieces of information and argument are supposed to be given when. And during cross-ex, keep it civil - we're all on the same team, trying to figure out the best course of action for the common good. Ask questions, allow your opponents to answer fully, and treat them with respect.

I debated in high school and college (graduated 1968) and have been coaching since. I have lived through the transition from Debate to Policy Debate and the birth and development of both Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum

Lincoln-Douglas Debate: Lincoln-Douglas (value debate) was created because many people did not like the direction that Policy Debate had gone. As such, LD debate centers around a conflict between two values. Debaters argue that one of the values in the round is of higher importance than the other. This value priority determines the affirmation or negation of the resolution. Thus, the debater argues Justice(ex) is the higher value, and since Justice is the higher value the resolution is affirmed. A plan can be used to demonstrate how the resolution could be applied in a practical sense. Since LD is designed not to have a plan, if the opponent raises that argument, I will vote on that. Otherwise, the plan can be debated in terms of workability, practicality, etc. Regardless of the strategies used – in order to win the round, the debater must win the value conflict.

Public Forum was introduced to correct the flaws that had emerged in LD (excessive speed, strategies and tactics rather than sound argument, etc) and is designed to be judged by a non-debate person. Thus – a good Public Forum Round is clear and persuasive. Arguments and evidence relates directly back to the topic. There are no plans in PF – I will vote on that. A test that I use in judging PF is whether or not a “regular person” would understand the arguments and be able to decide the outcome of the round.

Since debate – in all of its forms – is an educational, communication event the following hold true:

Delivery is the means by which the debater presents the arguments and evidence for decision.

The presentation should be as clear and understandable as possible – rate and articulation are important elements because the judge must hear and understand the case in order to vote on it.

IT IS THE DEBATER’S OBLIGATION TO ADAPT TO THE JUDGE – NOT VICE VERSA.

Debaters should present their material and conduct themselves in a professional manner. They should avoid attitudes (reflected in both tone and facial expression) that are unprofessional. Word choice should be appropriate to an educational event (cussing, swearing, vocabulary choice etc) have NO PLACE in an educational activity.

I'm a former Congressional debater (with some PF experience) who did debate for all four years on both the local and national circuit (including finals at nationals).

PF: While I typically judge congress, I have PF experience both in competing and judging (I have judged both on the local and national circuit). When evaluating arguments, I value clear links throughout your arguments (and for these arguments to be carried through!), direct refutation, and weight on impacts. Directly explain to me why you're correct and your opponent is not; make sure every claim you have has warrants to back it up. I don't have a preference for speed (I make sure to thoroughly flow the round), but just make sure that if you're attempting to speak at a faster pace that you enunciate clearly.

Congress: I judge based off of quality of arguments and speaking style fairly equally, but you need both to be successful. I don't want to see rehash of arguments, and students who can effectively respond to other speakers and further debate are more likely to win my ballot. I value structured speaking with lots of signposting as well, and it's really important that you're engaged throughout the round and asking good questions. Please be respectful to your competitors as well! :-)

Looking for REFUTATION in speeches and at least one of the three pillars of argument (ethos, pathos, and logos) in each claim. Looking for you to convince me that your source is reputable. Not looking for "what if" scenarios. Not looking for a hastily spoken word vomit.

I'm a second-year judge (graduated Millard South in 2022) and did congress for all four years of high school; As such I judge Congress primarily but have been getting experience with PF.

I believe that your goal during a debate is to present your position in the best light possible, so I'll be looking at whether your arguments are good advocacy for your overall contentions as well as if they're properly substantiated.

Properly cited evidence from reputable sources is key, and each time I hear an empirically falsifiable claim I'd like to hear some type of data to go along with it. The way I see it, anecdotes do have a place in debates, but never as a substitution for proper evidence. An anecdote can't be used to demonstrate how often something happens, but it could be used as a powerful example for how something may happen. Always tie your sources into your impacts and try to use data responsibly within its proper context.

Tone and presentation are also important, because they play a big role in how you're perceived. Sounding confident or being hard to rattle during questioning are always good skills to refine, but I'm aware that some debaters (myself included) do the sport in order to build the presentation skills and confidence that they don't already have, so I won't be judging very harshly on this (especially for novices). As a bare minimum, just make sure that you're audible and that your presentation doesn't detract too much from your ability to argue.

Clash is very important. Come prepared to overhaul some or all of your speech in response to the speeches given by your opponents.

Be kind to your fellow debaters. Your competitors aren't your enemies and there is no reason to be disrespectful, discriminatory, or bigoted. If a speech has abusive or inappropriate behavior (racism, sexism, transphobia, or disproportionate hostility), I will not score that speech very highly. This standard is consistent with my standards for effective advocacy.

For Congress: Be genuine with your contentions and your votes. If somebody makes an amendment that would fix one of your negation arguments, you should be voting for that amendment even though it would suck for your speech for it to be passed. Because it IS noticeable if somebody points out a flaw with a bill, an amendment is presented to solve that flaw, and that same person contributes to the failure of that amendment.

6 years of judging in PF and Congress

Overall Expectations:

Be respectful to your fellow competitors and judges. Debate is educational as well as competitive and the skills that you learn and develop within your event will serve you well later in life. I speak on this as a former debater.

Take pride in the work that you do. It can be very obvious when you are not as prepared. There is an element of debate that does require improvisation and being able to form arguments on the spot but the best arguments are still those that have an element of preparedness to it. Find that balance and I promise it will reflect well on your ballot.

Just like you, I am still learning how to be a good judge, so I ask for some patience, especially in events like PF and LD where I do not have nearly as much experience as I do with Congress.

Any kind of argument based on bigoted ideology will result in an instant loss of the round and I will be discussing it with you and your coach.

Congress:

Congress is probably the most unique of all of the debate events done at the NSDA level. The speed is much slower and you must be more tactical when you choose to speak. This does not make it any less debate and expect you to be paying attention to what your fellow competitors are doing in the session. I love clash and have no problem with you doing it from the beginning. Call each other out while staying as respectful as possible, we don't need this to descend into actual Congress.

Respect is paramount in Congress. While an individual event you should work together with your fellow representatives/senators to come up with strategies, set the docket, and pass legislation. This is a mock Congress and you should take into consideration the needs of the people you are supposed to be representing.

Questions are super important in debate and I consider it when making my decision. Quality is always more important than quantity. I'd rather that you be asking 1 or 2 good questions than 5 or 6 not-so-good ones.

PF:

The main element that is needed within PF is the ability to adapt. Not only to your opponent but to your judge as well. I am not a very technical judge. While keeping track of your flows your argument needs to make sense. You can't just argue that if the status quo changes it will lead to nuclear war. I need a sound argument of cause and effect. If the prompt proves to be true then it will lead to these side effects.

If your point is landing don't drag it along toward the end. Cut it out if you can't get past your opponent's refutation. The best debaters don't force through an argument but are flexible and creative enough to still get the point even when one of their points doesn't work.

During cross don't talk over one another. You are not proving a point you are just being rude. I will be paying attention during cross and will be using that to weigh into my decision. If you are talking I am listening. The first time I won't say anything but if it continues to become a problem I will say something and you don't want your team to lose a point because of it.

LD:

I am relatively new to judging LD so please bear with me.

If you have any questions please feel free to email me at sky.stefanski14@gmail.com