The debate topic will be announced on February 25th

Each team will debate half of their rounds on the affirmative, arguing for the resolution, and half of their rounds on the negative, arguing against the resolution.

Debate rounds will be organized according to the following format (each debater should rotate delivering two speeches - one constructive and one rebuttal):

Constructive speeches - in the constructive speeches, each team presents their initial argument (in the first constructives) with evidence to support their claims, and then rebuilds and provides additional evidence for their claims (second constructives).

1st Affirmative Constructive (1AC) - 5 minutes

1st Negative Constructive (1NC) - 5 minutes

2nd Affirmative Constructive (2AC) - 5 minutes

2nd Negative Constructive (2NC) - 5 minutes

Cross-Examination - each team has time to ask and respond to questions from the other team.

Affirmative Cross-Examination - 3 minutes

Negative Cross-Examination - 3 minutes

Rebuttal speeches - in the rebuttal speeches, each team refutes their opponent's arguments and rebuilds their own. New arguments and evidence are not allowed in the rebuttals, although new interpretations of previous arguments are. In the final rebuttals, debaters present a clear argument to the judge for why they believe their team should win the debate.

1st Negative Rebuttal - 4 minutes

1st Affirmative Rebuttal - 4 minutes

2nd Negative Rebuttal - 3 minutes

2nd Affirmative Rebuttal - 3 minutes

Preparation Time - Each team will have a 5 minutes total of time that can be used between speeches for preparing arguments, organization, etc.

Judging: during the debate, judges listen to arguments and take notes on both arguments and evidence. After the debate, judges will have time to both decide on a winner and a loser, assign "speaker points" to individual debaters based on speaking skill, and give a brief oral critique and explanation of their decision.

The next page contains a more detailed discussion of speaker roles:

1AC/1AR: The first affirmative constructive (5 minutes) is the most prepared speech in the debate. In this speech, you should present your plan and the reasons why the judge should vote for it. If you think it useful, you can also use this speech to anticipate major negative arguments. This speech should contain a great deal of evidence; major claims should be supported with oral citations. The first affirmative rebuttal (4 minutes) is responsible for continuing the work done in the second affirmative constructive to refute the negative's attacks against your plan and defense of the status quo. In this speech, you should identify and attack the most important negative arguments against your plan and identify and defend the most important affirmative arguments for your plan. As this is a rebuttal, you should restrict the evidence and major points you use to arguments brought up in the 1AC and the 2AC. For this rebuttal, focus on spending time refuting important negative arguments and avoid summary. Remember that the negative has been able to speak twice in a row before this speech, which means that you will need to provide a strong refutation of their arguments to get your audience back onto your side.

1NC/1NR: The first negative constructive (5 minutes) is also a highly prepared speech, as you know what the affirmative plan will be, and will have a pretty good idea of what their major arguments will be. This speech should primarily be an articulation of your major arguments for why enacting the plan would be a bad idea. As you will have an idea of what the 1AC will say, you should pick your major arguments to be ones that are responsive to the affirmative's justifications for the plan. Another way to think of the purpose of this speech is as an articulation of the negative consequences of enacting the plan and a defense of the status quo. In other words, your speech should contain both offense - reasons why the plan is bad - and defense - reasons why the plan isn't needed/the status quo is addressing the problem adequately. As in the 1AC, this speech should consist almost entirely of arguments supported with orally cited evidence. The first negative rebuttal (4 minutes), like the 1AR, should identify and attack major affirmative arguments and identify and defend major negative arguments, should avoid summary, and should avoid making new arguments.

2AC/2AR: The role of the second affirmative constructive (5 minutes) 5is to rebuild the justification for the plan you presented in the 1AC by answering the major arguments presented in the 1NC. You should make use of both analysis and evidence in the 1AC and new analysis and evidence in attacking negative arguments. In this speech, you should make sure that you respond to all of the major 1NC arguments. In the second affirmative rebuttal (3 minutes), you will have a very limited amount of time to finish the debate, so you should focus on two primary objectives. First, you should provide a summary of your major arguments and your refutation of major negative arguments. Second, you should outline two or three key reasons why you have won the debate.

2NC/2NR: The second negative constructive (5 minutes) is similar to the second affirmative constructive; you should use this speech to rebuild the arguments against the plan and in defense of the status quo that you presented in the 1NC. As this is a constructive, you should focus on bringing in any additional evidence in support of your 1NC claims that you and your partner think is necessary; in the rebuttals you won't be able to introduce new arguments or evidence. In the second negative rebuttal (3 minutes), you should provide a brief summary of your attacks of the plan and refutation of arguments in the 2AC and 1AR and conclude with two or three key reasons why you've won the debate.

Cross-examination (1 ½ minutes per side): In the cross-examination period, you and your partner should take turns asking questions of the other team. Your first concern is to make sure that you understand all of the arguments they've made; if you don't get something that's happening in the debate, you need to ask clarifying questions so that you can adequately respond in the rebuttals. Your primary task, however, should be to ask strategic questions that set up arguments you will make or that cast doubt on the credibility of the other team's evidence or arguments. We'll work on strategies for effective cross-examination; a key element of a good CX is to avoid asking overly leading/obvious questions. For example, if you ask something like "won't your plan cause the United States economy to collapse?" the obvious response would be "no, of course not."

Generally, the constructive speeches are for building and rebuilding your initial case. Your rebuttal speeches should use the arguments you've made in the constructives to attack the major arguments of the other side and defend the major arguments of your side.