Policy debate: proposal for a new event

1. Policy debate: proposal for a new event By Rich Edwards, Ph.D. Professor of Communication Baylor University

2. What are the problems? • Non-Persuasive Delivery: Traditional CX debate, even when focused on the national topic, has become unintelligible to the average listener because of delivery speed and inattention to the normal rules of effective public speaking. • Judging: Traditional CX debate has created unrealistic expectations for judges, limiting the available judge pool, increasing judging fees and imposing barriers to entry. • Length of Round: Traditional CX debate takes at least an hour and a half; all other forensic events now fit within a one hour time block. This creates tournament scheduling problems. • No Topic Focus: Traditional CX debate has become home to performance and kritik arguments unbounded by the national resolution.

3. Why has this happened? • Insular Judging Pool: Mutual preference judging systems have narrowed the necessity of judge adaptation, facilitating argumentative strategies based on performance, kritiks, or use of excessive delivery speed. • Loss of a Rules-Focus for the Event: Traditional CX debate has evolved into an activity where all issues are now debatable, including whether the assigned topic (the debate resolution) is even relevant to the outcome of the debate round. • Other Debate Events Are Now More Attractive to Students: The barrier to entry in Traditional CX debate is too high because of the foregoing concerns. There is no proving ground for beginners, because the field is dominated by the few schools that continue to compete nationally

4. Some lessons from the uil • Rules Matter: The UIL rule book imposes a number of restrictions that lower the barrier to entry: Judges are instructed to penalize overly-rapid delivery; teams are not allowed to prompt their partners while they have the floor; scouting is restricted. • State Championships Matter: Traditional CX teams traveling the national circuit, or even some participants in Texas Forensic Association (TFA) tournaments, sometimes snicker at the quality of competitors in UIL CX debate. For Texas high school administrators and for Texas community groups, winning a state association championship is a much bigger deal than winning a TFA tournament or even placing at the national tournament. • Numbers Don’t Lie: The UIL state tournament process last year began with 2,283 teams, or 4,566 debaters. Remember this number is very conservative: It includes public high school students, and is limited by the fact that schools can only enter 3 teams in districts even though many schools have more.

5. Proposal for a new event • Call it Policy Debate: The name is significant, meaning that we will be debating the national policy debate resolution as selected by the National Federation of High Schools. • Limit the Time: The New Jersey after school leagues have, for years, used a time structure that allows a policy debate on the national topic to be completed within a 45 minute time frame. This better allows for rounds that fit within the rest of the events scheduled at a tournament. It also puts policy debate into a frame that allows a practice round to be completed within a normal high school class schedule. • Rules to Level the Playing Field: Use of the NFHS national rule book for the event, with attention to the following: Random judging, Topicality is a voting issue, persuasive speaking is prioritized, prompting is limited. Teams traveling the national circuit will likely be uninterested in participating in this event, which is also a good thing.

6. The structure of policy debate • Constructive Speeches • 1AC: 5 Minutes • Cross-Examined by 2NC: 2 Minutes • 1NC: 5 Minutes • Cross-Examined by 1AC: 2 Minutes • 2AC: 5 Minutes • Cross-Examined by 1NC: 2 Minutes • 2NC: 5 Minutes • Cross-Examined by 2AC: 2 Minutes • Rebuttal Speeches • 1NR: 3 Minutes • 1AR: 3 Minutes • 2NR: 3 Minutes • 2AR: 3 Minutes • Prep Time: 4 Minutes (Total Debate Time: 44 Minutes)

7. Where existing versions of policy debate are thriving, there is no need for change. Where policy debate is going or gone, there is an alternative. NFHS has made a major commitment to policy debate: Let’s keep it alive! www.nfhs.org