YALE

Dear Speech and Debate Coaches:

On behalf of the Yale Debate Association, we invite you and your team to the 31st Annual Yale Invitational High School Tournament from Friday, September 29th to Sunday, October 1st. The tournament will feature Varsity and JV Lincoln Douglas Debate, Varsity and JV Public Forum Debate, an open division in Policy Debate, an open division in Parliamentary Debate, an open division in Congressional Debate, and eight Speech events (Duo, DI, EX, HI, INF, OI, OO, and POI).

This Fall, Congressional Debate and all eight Speech events will take place In-Person in New Haven. Lincoln Douglas, Public Forum, Policy, and Parliamentary Debate will be held Online.

Year after year, our tournament grows and gains more national recognition for its high level of competition. Quarterfinalists in Varsity Lincoln Douglas Debate, octofinalists in Public Forum Debate, and semifinalists in Congressional Debate will earn bids to the 2024 Tournament of Champions. In addition, high-level competitors in all eight Speech events will earn a bid to the University of Kentucky TOC.

We are once again pleased to offer a team of nationally recognized and successful tab coordinators. Lincoln Douglas Debate tab will be led by Crawford Leavoy, Public Forum Debate by Jeffrey Kahn, and Policy Debate by Sheryl Kaczmarek. Parliamentary Debate will be led by Everett Rutan and Congressional Debate by Kimberly Bayan-Berlat. Speech tab will be led by Joe Vaughan. Our Tournament Chair will be Sarah Donnelly. The experience and proficiency of our tab staff will help to ensure a smooth tournament.

Please take the time to read the whole invitation. This packet contains critical information for the tournament and will likely answer many potential questions.

All tournament participants are expected to be familiar with our policies as they are outlined in the following pages. Your knowledge of important details is the only way we may ensure that the tournament runs smoothly and efficiently. Please take note of all directions, guidelines, and deadlines.

Online Rules and Hospitality
This section applies to virtual schools and attendees.

Safety
The tab room phone number will be announced on Tabroom in August. Please make all of your students and judges aware of this number, so they can contact our tab staff. This number is for tournament use only and will be answered only during the tournament.

The Yale Invitational staff reserves the right to refuse entry to the tournament to anyone—be they a competitor, judge, coach, or observer—at its sole discretion.

Virtual Programming
For our virtual competitors, we are working on crafting an engaging program of events to bring students virtually to Yale’s campus both before and after competition. Some potential programming may include: a keynote speaker, a Yale admissions office info session, a Yale Debate Association demo debate, a Q&A with Yale students, and more. Additional information on this programming is forthcoming.

Registration Process
We will begin with universal waitlist status. All entries will automatically be placed on a waitlist.

Waitlist Information
We will determine who receives additional entries with four factors of cascading importance in mind: total registration interest with respect to the event’s cap, the school diversity of the competitor pool, the date of a school’s registration, and previous attendance at our tournament.

Practically, this is to say that if we cannot approve all entries in a division without exceeding its event cap, schools wishing to enter a large number of additional entries in a particular event will not receive slots for the totality of their additional entries before other schools receive their first additional slots. Beyond that, we will look to a first-come first-serve basis, and finally, in close instances, show appreciation to teams who have supported our tournament in the past.

We will notify waitlisted entries immediately if they are moved off of the waitlist. Though we usually have had a waitlist through August, we have historically been able to accommodate almost every student that has wanted to compete in our tournament.

Varsity and Junior Varsity Status
We strongly encourage coaches to choose division with the educational purpose of debate in mind. Overqualified debaters competing in Junior Varsity divisions can compromise this purpose and damage tournament experiences. This being said, there are a few hard and fast rules.

If a student meets any single one of these benchmarks, they must enter Varsity:

They have more than two years experience.
They are in the 12th grade.
They broke at a national tournament in a Junior Varsity division last year.

Students who do not meet any of these benchmarks may enter Varsity or Junior Varsity.

Middle School Students
Middle school students are not exempt from the first benchmark above. We will accept middle school students in JV, but any middle school students with more than two years of debating experience should enter Varsity.

Required Forms

There will be required forms for all schools. The “Parent and Guardian” forms must be signed by a parent or legal guardian for each student who is participating in the tournament.

The “Parent and Guardian” forms must be signed by a parent or legal guardian for each student who is participating in the tournament.

Form Deadlines
The deadline for submission of the “Liability Waiver”, and “Image and Recording Release” forms is September 26th at 12:00 PM ET.

Registration Procedures and Deadlines
All times are in ET.
If you are not dropping all entries in an event, and you do not meet your judge obligation, or you drop a judge after the deadline, you will be charged for a hired judge and a $100 fine.

Judging

Lincoln Douglas
● Judges are obligated to judge through Octofinals OR one round past any round in which their school’s students are actively competing, whichever is later.
● Judges must have paradigms posted on their Tabroom accounts.

Public Forum
Please Note: Varsity and Junior Varsity Public Forum will share a judge pool this year. As such, for judging obligations, Varsity and Junior Varsity will be treated together as a single division. Obligations follow:
● Judges are obligated to judge through Octofinals (the second round on Sunday) OR one round past any round in which their school’s students are actively competing, whichever is later.
● Judges must have paradigms posted on their Tabroom accounts.
● Judges will see rounds by both Varsity and Junior Varsity debaters, and thus must be qualified to evaluate Varsity rounds.

Judge Expectations
Please appreciate the impact your judge will have on the debates they evaluate, and the educational goals of this activity. We often only notice unqualified judges after a number of competitors have been unfairly adjudicated.

A qualified judge understands the activity and is either experienced sitting in the back of the room with a ballot or flow pad, or has been carefully trained by the team they are accompanying. A qualified judge knows how to assign ranks or wins/losses, speaker points, and knows how to fill out a ballot. All judges must be older than high school age.

For Public Forum, all judges must be qualified to evaluate Varsity debate rounds.

Tabroom
Please make sure that you have your notifications sent to your cell phones, and that all of your team, including students and judges, are plugged in. Students and/or judges who miss rounds will not be forgiven because of “technical problems.” It has been our experience that most technical issues result from the students’ or judges’ Tabroom.com profile not being linked correctly or contact information (cell phone and email) not being provided within the profile.

We will also be asking for judge cell phone numbers at registration on the tournament website. Keep in mind that the more judge cell numbers you register, the fewer times we’ll be calling you. The more contact information that we have for your judges, the easier it will be to resolve questions or issues that may arise during the tournament.

Paradigms (LD/Policy/PF)
We require all debate judges to post a paradigm under their Tabroom accounts profile. In any case, judges should be willing to indicate before a round to competitors a general sense of their vision of debate (if any) or a sense of their experience, to aid competitors in choosing how best to make their arguments.

Debate entries will not be allowed to submit preferences and strikes unless all of their judges have paradigms. This is true for Policy, PF, and LD.

Decision Disclosure (PF)
We require judges relay their decision to the debaters verbally after the round has concluded, specifying both the name and side (pro/con) of the team that won. Reasons for decisions are not required to be delivered verbally, though they are expected in the written ballot. We find this measure decreases the number of mistaken ballot entries and improves debaters’ tournament experiences.

Missing Judge Fees
Schools whose judges fail to appear for an assigned round will be fined $50 for each round. Judges fined may compensate by judging rounds beyond their assignment. We do not want your money; we want judges to show up. However, schools with unpaid fines will not be given ballots or awards, and they will be prevented from registering at other tournaments we run until those fines are paid. Our tab staff runs many, many tournaments. Don’t break the rules, or else you may be prevented from competing at other tournaments.

LD Mutually Preferred Judging
We will be using Mutually Preferred Judging in LD Debate. Each debater in the Varsity division, provided their judging obligation is covered, will be able to rank all judges from 1-6 (6 being a strike). Conflicts will be handled separately, and instructions will be provided for defining conflicts both for teams and for judges; keep in mind that a conflict is a judge who likes you too much, not another chance for you to get more strikes. Students found to be misusing conflicts will face repercussions up to and including disqualification from the tournament. We wish to emphasize that we expect students participating in non-school sponsored “club programs” are expected to follow the conflict regulations set forth by both their school and their club. Debaters who are discovered to not be following any set of conflict guidelines applicable to them can lose all of their preferences.

MPJ ratings will be available on Tabroom on the Tuesday before the tournament. They will close Friday, September 29th at 12:00 PM ET. If you are not getting a ranking option when you go into your online registration, your judging obligation was not covered.

Event Information

Lincoln Douglas Debate
There will be both Varsity and Junior Varsity divisions of Lincoln Douglas Debate. The resolution will be the September-October National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) topic for 2023. Both VLD and JVLD will follow the 6-3-7-3-4-6-3 format. Debaters will have 5 minutes of prep time. Ties will be broken based on record, high/low adjusted points, double-adjusted points, opponent’s record, total points, judge variance, and coin flip, in that order. There will be six rounds in both Varsity and JV; the break will be to double-octofinals in both LD divisions. If necessary, there will be a run-off in VLD of 4-2’s.

Public Forum Debate
There will be both Varsity and Junior Varsity divisions of Public Forum Debate. We will follow all NSDA rules. The tournament will use the NSDA September/October topic for 2023. Ties will be broken using the same criteria as Lincoln Douglas Debate. For the Varsity division, we expect to host 6 pre-elimination rounds with a break to full or partial triple-octa finals. For the Junior Varsity division, we expect to host 6 pre-elimination rounds with a break to partial or full double-octofinals. We may alter these structures in response to Registration interest.

Source Integrity
Debate
All students must bring copies of all sources, which must include the full context of the citation, not simply a retyped list of short sentences and quotes. Upon request, competitors must make these sources available to their opponent(s) in the round and/or their judges (after the round). Debate entries failing to do so or debaters who significantly misrepresent sources in the round may be disqualified at tab’s discretion.

Equity
We will be putting together an equity team for our tournament in efforts to provide an improved speech and debate environment. These individuals will put out an equity policy and be on call during the tournament to act as a resource for students and judges pertaining to equity-related issues.

YALE INVITATIONAL
Alsion students only

29 September 2023 - 1 October 2023

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

YALE INVITATIONALAlsion students only