WINTER CLU

Winter Invitational
2022 Invitational Speech and Debate Tournament Saturday-Sunday, February 19-20, 2022
Online via NSDA Campus

Dear Speech and Debate Community:

The La Reina Speech and Debate program is pleased to invite you and your program to participate in our Winter Invitational, formerly affiliated with California Lutheran University, which this year will be taking place February 19th and 20th, 2022 on the NSDA Campus Platform. The CLU program is on hiatus during the pandemic and we are hopeful that once things return to normal that CLU will be able to join us in hosting this tournament.

We will be offering middle school, high school novice, and high school varsity divisions in all relevant CHSSA and SCJFL speech events on Saturday with three preliminary rounds plus finals and then on Sunday will offer 3 debate rounds in all formats with a 4th prelim including a hidden semifinal, and final rounds after awards for everyone to watch. We will also offer middle school, high school novice, and high school varsity divisions of congress. Students are welcome and encouraged to double enter in speech events and to compete “up” in debate and congress for the additional challenge. For the purposes of our tournament, we are defining “novices” as high school students who’ve attended 5 or fewer tournaments and we encourage experienced middle school competitors to compete in high school divisions with coach permission. We also reserve the right to collapse divisions and merge events as entries warrant, but will do so to best preserve the spirit and character of each particular event.

We will be using the January/February topic in Lincoln-Douglas, the February topic in Public Forum, the 2021-2022 national topic in policy, and an original mix of fact, value, and policy resolutions in Parliamentary Debate. Both Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum will be double-flighted but Parli will be single-flighted with a prep room and topic announce over Zoom. All events will be conducted live on the NSDA Campus platform except Duo Interpretation, which we will be offering asynchronously.

Lastly, due to the size of the La Reina program, we may limit the tournament size prior to the published registration deadline, so early registration is advised.

We are looking forward to hosting all of you as we prepare for quals season.

Tabroom Accounts
Students are not able to compete on the NSDA Campus platform and judges cannot access their ballots without a tabroom.com account that is linked to the school/program account.

Debate Topics:
Lincoln-Douglas Topic: January/February Topic (Appropriation of Outer Space)
Public Forum Topic: February Topic (Turkey)

Divisions:
Middle School, High School Novice, and High School Open in all events.
Experienced middle school students are encouraged to compete in the high school novice division with coach approval.
We define a “novice” as a high school student who has attended 5 or fewer tournaments.

Patterns:
Speech Pattern A: Extemp, Dramatic Interp, Original Oratory, Duo Interp, Program Oral Interp, Poetry
Speech Pattern B: Impromptu, Humorous Interp, Informative/Expository, Oratorical Interp/Declamation, Original Prose and Poetry, Prose
Debate: all events in one pattern. Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum will be double flighted.

Judges
All judges are expected to have an electronic device (laptop/desktop computer, iPad/tablet, or at minimum a compatible smartphone) capable of accessing the NSDA Campus platform and we will charge nuisance fees if judge problems cause the tournament to run late. All debate judges are also expected to have a basic judging paradigm available on tabroom.com for students to review before rounds.

Electronic Device Failure Policy
We strongly, strongly encourage all students and judges to use a wired Internet connection and have a backup device and backup connection (like a hotspot) ready to go in the event of device failure or loss of an Internet connection. In the event of device failure or loss of connection, students and coaches should notify the tournament immediately and will have 10 minutes to restore their connection and return digitally to their round. If the student or judge is unable to return in time, we will make reasonable accommodations to attempt to allow the affected students to finish their round – speech students may have to give their speeches to their judge in a backup competition room or will be judged on the basis of their interrupted performance. Policy, Parli, and Public Forum debaters may have to continue as “mavericks” without their partner and Lincoln-Douglas debaters may have to forfeit their round.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policy
We believe that the cross-cultural understanding that forensics develops in understanding how different people experience the world differently and understanding different sides of an argument is one of the most important life skills that the activity develops. Thus we are proud to support the ongoing efforts of the NSDA and other forensics organizations to promote understanding. We will be including relevant language on our tournament ballots and will address judge sensitivity during our judge training.

Accessibility Policy
In keeping with our above DEI policy, we encourage coaches to contact us directly regarding any accommodations that the tournament needs to make to create an inclusive environment for all students.

General Rules:
School registration in part or whole may be rejected due to space considerations so please register early! Every year several schools cannot attend or have their entries restricted. The tournament will consist of three preliminary rounds of speech plus finals and three debate rounds plus two elimination rounds. All divisions will receive awards. We reserve the right to combine divisions if the entry warrants.

Sweepstakes:
We will offer two sets of sweepstakes awards – 1st through 3rd in speech and 1st through 3rd in debate.

Events Rules:
We will generally follow CHSSA rules for high school events and SCJFL rules for middle school events, with exceptions considered on a case-by-case basis at the sole discretion of the tournament director. All speeches are expected to be the original work of the student and may not have been used in competition prior to August 2021. Extemp will be combined national and international, with rounds themed around questions of domestic, international, and economic issues. Impromptu topics will relate to the holiday season. Events with small entries will be folded into similar events. We will also use the “sudden death” format to tabulate the placement of students in final rounds rather than “total cume.”

Debate Rules:
We again will generally follow CHSSA rules for high school competition and SCJFL rules for middle school competition, with exceptions considered on a case-by-case basis at the sole discretion of the tournament director. Each program may have one hybrid team with another program but double entries will not be allowed in debate due to the tournament schedule. “Maverick” debaters in Policy, Public Forum, and Parliamentary Debate will only be allowed under extreme circumstances. We also will not break brackets to avoid teams from the same program hitting each other. Computers are allowed in all debate events except Parliamentary Debate, in which case computers may be used in prep but not during actual rounds.

WINTER INVITATIONAL FORMERLY CLU

19-20 February 2022

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WINTER INVITATIONAL FORMERLY CLU​