TIME LIMITS/ SPEECH ORDER/OTHER DETAILS
The speeches of the debate shall be organized as follows:
Affirmative constructive
Cross examination by negative
Negative constructive
Cross examination by affirmative
Affirmative rebuttal
Negative rebuttal
Affirmative rebuttal
6 minutes
3 minutes
7 minutes
3 minutes
4 minutes
6 minutes
3 minutes
PREPARATION TIME
Each debater receives four minutes of preparation time to use as he or she desires. If, for
example, the negative uses one minute to prepare for their cross examination of the
affirmative, they will have three minutes remaining for the rest of the round. If they use
an additional three minutes to prepare for their constructive, they will have no preparation
time left in the round. This means that the clock will start ticking for their rebuttal as
soon as the affirmative concludes its first affirmative rebuttal. Some tournaments use
three minutes for prep time, some use five. If the tournament is using something other
than four minutes, we will let you know when they let us know.
BALLOTS
1.
The tournament should have signs that tell judges where you pick up and return your
ballots. When you pick up the ballot, someone will check your name off of a list and
the same thing will happen when you return your ballot. The person who takes your
completed ballot will check it over to make sure that you have identified a winner and
that you have filled out the speaker point portion of the ballot. Think of judging as a
five-step process:
A. Find your assignment. There will be schedules posted on the walls that will
tell you the room to which you have been assigned.
B. You pick up your ballot.
C. You go to your assigned room, hear a debate, and pick a winner.
D. You fill out your ballot—check off who won the round, assign points, write
out the reasons for your decision in the appropriate spot on the ballot.
E. Return the ballot to the assigned location.
2. The Tab Room. The tab room functions as the tournament headquarters. If you run
into problems, you will want to go to the tab room to get those problems resolved.
Some problems that you might encounter include being assigned to judge your son or
daughter, your boss’s child, or a team that you heard in a previous round at the
tournament. There should be plenty of signs that point you in the direction of the tab
room. They should be able to resolve these sorts of problems.
TIPS REGARDING JUDGING
1.
2.
Taking notes makes it easier to keep track of who said what and who forgot to answer important
points made by their opponent. Most of the time, I take minimal notes on one piece of paper that
tracks what happens to the affirmative’s case and a separate piece of paper to keep track of any
arguments that the negative might make that aren’t directly related to the affirmative’s case.
Minimal notes help but most of the writing that I do during a round is on the ballot—mentioning the
arguments that were done well and suggesting ways that they might improve.
Debating judging is very, very subjective. Even people who judge debates for a living can’t agree on
who won and who lost. I have seen national championship rounds with 7 judges voting for one side
and 2 convinced the other side had prevailed. In Wisconsin, the state high school championship was
once decided on 21-2 decision. Think of yourself as an umpire. If you say it’s a strike, it’s a strike.
If you are confused, you should probably vote negative. At the minimum, the affirmative bears some
burden and if you are confused they didn’t meet that burden.
THE SORTS OF THINGS THAT SHOW UP ON BALLOTS
COMMENTS TO THE
COMMENTS TO THE NEGATIVE
I don’t think you should accuse your
AFFIRMATIVE: Bullfighting—what an
interesting idea. I wonder if the example is
big enough to prove the resolution. In your
rebuttal, I think that you are talking much
too fast. You spent too much time telling
me why bullfighting proves the topic and
did not answer the argument that raising
bulls actually helps preserve critical
ecosystems in Spain. Maybe it’s just me,
but having 4 or 5 things called voting issues
and claiming that you win all of them isn’t
very persuasive. Some of those “issues”
seem like very picky points rather than
things that can decide the round.
REASONS FOR DECISION:
opponent of cheating just because he
chooses to discuss the virtues of bullfighting.
I can understand why that you were taken by
surprise, but try to stay calm.
You need to work on your eye contact.
When you are telling me that debate should
be focused on the general truth of the
resolution, you never look up. The same
thing happens in your rebuttal—you are just
reading a pre-prepared speech rather than
speaking to me. Wow, I can’t believe that
you have specific evidence on the
environmental advantages of bullfighting.
From my perspective, the affirmative has a couple of problems. First, the
negative makes an argument that bullfighting helps protect some critical ecosystems in Spain. Fighting bulls may hurt
the bulls but the profits from selling fighting bulls means that the habitat for lots of other plants and animals doesn’t get
turned in condos or used to raise crops. This might not be a devastating response, but the affirmative never answers the
position. On one side, I have some dead bulls and on the other side of the ledger I have many more animals that will be
just as dead, some that might go extinct, and a bunch of plants and insects that will be worse off as well. The second
big problem for the affirmative is that the negative is winning that eating meat is a better test of the general truth of the
resolution. If it is okay to kill cows to eat them, the affirmative has to lay out a reason why it is wrong to play with
them in the arena before we kill them. When the affirmative says, “we have the right to define and we say that the only
thing that is up for debate is bullfighting. We don’t have to defend veganism” that strike me as a very persuasive
rejoinder. It seems to me that the negative is ahead on the more basic argument that there is nothing wrong with
slaughtering cattle and whether it is done on industrial scale or one bull at a time is of little consequence. And that’s
why I voted for the negative.