HARVARD BIF

We are delighted to invite you to attend the Forty-Eighth annual Harvard National Forensics Tournament, which will be held online on Presidents' Day Weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, & Monday, February 18-21, 2022.
We have several announcements concerning this year’s tournament.

First, once again this year’s tournament will be conducted online via the classrooms.cloud platform. We look forward to the opportunity to host everyone back in person in Cambridge in 2023.

We have made the decision to go with classrooms.cloud because it is the best way to administer the tournament. However, this system, along with staff necessary to run the tournament, incurs considerable expenses. We will also be shipping our customary awards to all students who qualify for any elimination rounds. These will be mailed to the school.

We will continue to offer a Middle School Public Forum division and a Middle School Congressional Debate division open to students in the sixth through eighth grades. We will continue to have international breakout elimination rounds in the Junior Varsity Public Forum division. We will continue to offer two additional divisions in policy: novice and Spanish language debate (debate en espanol). We will not be offering Duo Interpretation this year.

All judges will be required to use electronic ballots in all divisions and to judge rounds via the classrooms.cloud zoom platform.
Lastly, JV/Var Public Forum and JV/Var Lincoln-Douglas divisions will begin on Friday, February 18, 2022.

Due to scheduling conflicts, no student may enter more than one of the following tournaments.

The Public Forum Debate Tournament

Location: Online
There will be four divisions of public forum debate – varsity, junior varsity, novice, and middle school – on the February National Speech and Debate Association topic. In the Junior Varsity division, there will be an international schools breakout division in the elimination rounds. To be eligible to participate in the breakout, students must attend a school located outside of the United States and indicate so when entering the tournament. All divisions will use National Speech & Debate Association time format and rules. We encourage coaches to enter students in the division that best approximates their skill and experience level, and we leave that judgment up to you.
The novice division is intended for high school students in their first year of competition. The middle school division is intended for students in the sixth through eighth grade. Ordinarily, students must attend the same school to compete as a team. However, we will accept entries from clubs or other debate organizations provided that the schools represented do not otherwise have a debate team.
Vital Stats: Varsity and Junior Varsity: 7 Preliminary Rounds, Clear to Triple Octafinals. We will add a partial quad round if necessary in order to clear all 5-2s up to 128 seeds. Novice and Middle School 5 preliminary rounds, clear to Triple Octa-finals. JV International Schools – Breakout to Quarterfinals. No Entry Limits.

The Lincoln-Douglas Debate Tournament

Location: Online
There will be two divisions, varsity and junior-varsity. Both will use the January-February National Speech and Debate Association topic and time limits. We encourage coaches to enter students in the division that best approximates their skill and experience level, and we leave that judgment up to you. We will utilize a mutual preference judging system for the Varsity division. All judges must post a paradigm on Tabroom.com and must have a high school diploma in order be qualified to judge in either division.
Vital Stats: Prelims: 7. Elims: Triple-octas in both divisions (top 64). No Entry Limit.

The Congressional Debate Tournament

Location: Online
National Speech & Debate Association (NSDA) rules and procedures determine advancement and placing based upon cumulative ranking by judges. The following NSDA rules pilots will be in effect: (1) debate on each item will be limited to one hour; (2) internet access to retrieve evidence will be allowed; (3) when debate concludes on each legislation, each author/sponsor will give a 90-second final appeal speech – with no questioning – and will be scored as a final addition to their speech, but not count for precedence/recency; (4) tournament-generated preset recency numbers for each contestant in the room for each round; (5) direct questioning for all rounds. Full rules and details are available at: https://www.congressionaldebate.org/harvard-tournament/general-information.
We have made a few adjustments to how the legislative docket and chamber assignments will be handled, in particular, due to the online nature of the tournament, and unpredictability with the competitive field.
Legislation will first be assessed (school/student identity withheld) by an independent review panel of alumni and inactive coaches to select a field of bills and resolutions best suited for debate, and distributed as evenly as possible across the topic areas above.
The complete docket will be released January 27, 2021.
The deadline for Congress entries is January 23, 2022. No refunds for drops after this date for any reason. Late entries may be admitted after January 24, 2022, but may not have an opportunity to cast votes for the docket.
Chamber assignments will be released at 9:45am EST, Saturday, February 19, 2022, adjusting for drops to ensure as balanced a competition as possible, and students are strongly discouraged from communicating with other contestants to negotiate agenda orders ahead of the tournament. With a smaller legislation packet of only three items per session (9 for prelims, collectively), there should not be a need for determining that ahead of time.
Vital Stats: Each chamber will have up to 12 contestants each. Prelims: 3 sessions. High School (Varsity) -- Octafinals: about 1/3 of the field; a reasonable number of about one-third will break to quarterfinals and semifinals; and 1/3 to 1/2 will break to finals based on overall field size. Top-performing octafinalists in each chamber earn a bid to the TOC, up to 120 students, with an equal number represented from each octafinal chamber. Middle School -- Semifinals: about 1/3 of the field; 1/3 to 1/2 will break to finals based on overall field size.
Entry limit: 35 entries

The Speech Tournament

Location: Online
The tournament will feature competition in six events:
●          extemporaneous speaking (no foreign/domestic split),
●          informative speaking.
●          dramatic interpretation.
●          original oratory,
●          humorous interpretation,
●          program oral interpretation,
Double-entry is permitted, and triple-entry is not unheard of. National Speech & Debate Association rules will govern all competitions. The individual events tournament director will be prepared to enforce National Speech & Debate Association rules if objections are brought to her attention in a timely manner. Judges will be required to submit ranks and ballots electronically. Elimination rounds will be sectioned by preliminary round seeds to balance out the competition.
Vital Stats: Prelims: 4. Elims: Octafinals, or Double-Octafinals for events with more than 300 entries.

General Tournament Rules

Judge Requirements
All judges provided by schools must be qualified, which at a minimum means a high school diploma.
All judges are bound by the codes of conduct governing activities at Harvard College and those promulgated by the NSDA. Judges will be required to attest that they have read and understand these codes of conduct before being able to judge. Instructions will be provided closer to the start of the tournament.
Judges may not simultaneously judge at any other tournaments. If we discover that you are doing so, we will remove you from the judge pool and notify the other tournament.
Any complaints about judge qualifications must be addressed to the tournament director prior to or immediately after the competition involved. All tournament directors have been authorized to impose penalties against schools whose judges do not appear for the rounds to which they have been assigned.

Elimination Round Participation
We expect participants in the various tournaments to compete in the elimination rounds. Debaters who choose not to debate rounds for any reason (other than that they are scheduled against another competitor from the same school) will be treated as having forfeited the round. The tournaments will no longer certify “co-champions” in final rounds.

Conduct Policy
The tournament strives to foster an environment promoting inclusivity and respect. The tournament will abide by Harvard College’s policies and procedures for sexual, gender-based, and racial harassment and discrimination. The Interim Policy on Sexual Harassment and the Interim Policy on Other Sexual Misconduct are available here: https://titleix.harvard.edu/policies-procedures. Per its regulations, Harvard College has a designated representative of its Title IX office to receive any complaints directly or indirectly by means of the tournament director. The tournament will also abide by policies governing codes of conduct within the Harvard community, including those prohibiting racial discrimination and harassment. They are available here: https://handbook.fas.harvard.edu/book/conduct-within-community.

Tournament Ombuds Committee
The tournament will designate an ombuds committee of three individuals to receive complaints and concerns regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion issues. Please note that this is not the appropriate place to report sexual or racial discrimination and harassment as detailed in the prior section; those reports should be made to the Tournament Director directly who will report to the appropriate Harvard offices. Additionally, concerns about tournament procedure and tabulation should be reported to your event’s tab room.

Online Technology Policies: Recording, Observers, Platforms
Recording: For the privacy and protection of students and other participants, any recording of speeches is prohibited, with the exception that students are permitted to record their own speeches.
Observers: Observers are permitted but must remain on mute, with videos off at all times, and rename themselves as “Observer -- Name.” All observers must be affiliated with an institution with active entries at the tournament and must be registered as an observer to the roster of that institution. Any individuals who wish to observe will need: (A) to have a tabroom.com account, (B) be added as competitors or judges to the team roster, (C) have their account linked, and (D) entered into the “Observer Division” as a competitor or as a judge. Unregistered observers will not be able to access the classrooms.cloud zoom rooms. The tournament reserves the right to remove any observers from any room at any time.
Alternative Platforms: For the safety of all participants, no one (judge, coach, student) may switch their rounds to an alternative video platform outside of the tournament hosted zoom rooms in classrooms.cloud. If anyone suggests moving to an alternative platform, please alert tournament personnel immediately. Judges who move to a separate platform will be fined as if they did not judge their rounds and removed from the tournament.
Judge Video: The tournament believes that competitors deserve to be able to see their judges as much as possible. Accordingly, to the maximum extent possible, the cameras of competitors and judges should be on (and on them) while a student is speaking and during RFDs. Brief pauses are understandable. To the extent needed, cameras can be off to enhance streaming quality.

Judging

All judges must be available for all preliminary rounds, the first elimination round, and for one round beyond elimination of the last contestant from the school that the judge represents in the tournament.
In Congress and Speech, judges must be available for the entire tournament, including through the final round.
All judges must be qualified, which at a minimum means a high school diploma.
All schools providing judges for the three debate tournaments with divisions should be flexible as to which division judges are assigned.

48TH ANNUAL HARVARD NATIONAL FORENSICS TOURNAMENT

18-21 February 2022

Information

Entry Price

Schedule

Drop Fee

Contact Info

Registration Form

We would love to have you visit soon at one of our open houses.
Check our home page for the schedule!

School year Hours

Telephone

Email (preferred)

Locations

48TH ANNUAL HARVARD NATIONAL FORENSICS TOURNAMENT​