West Bloomfield Debate Invitational

September 30th, 2023
You and your team are invited to attend the West Bloomfield high school Debate Invitational hosted by West Bloomfield HS

Some of the important information is as follows:

Location: We are excited to be back to hosting an in person debate tournament at West Bloomfield high school, located at 4925 Orchard Lake road, West Bloomfield, MI 48323. All tournament activities will be online via tabroom.com. PLEASE BE SURE ALL PARTICIPANTS HAVE AN ACTIVE TABROOM.COM ACCOUNT.

Registration: Registration will be open on TABROOM.COM by Thursday August 31st, and will close on Wednesday SEPTEMBER 27th, 2023 AT 5:00 PM

Divisions: An open division is being offered in Congressional and Policy debate, if entries warrant there will be a novice and open division in public forum. If there are not enough teams to fill a division we reserve the right to combine. No maverick entries will be accepted. There are no separate Middle School Divisions unless there are enough entries to warrant a separate division. You may enter Middle Schoolers but they will be competing within the high school divisions. All debate events are dependent on having enough entries as well. We will run a policy round robin as long as there are enough entries to run one.

-Policy will be Saturday only and a preset round robin tournament

-Public Forum will be Saturday only. As long as entries permit there will be an open and novice division (will be combined if number of entries warrant)

-Congressional will be Saturday only

-Public Forum workshop (Deb Marsh will be running a novice workshop for all new debaters)

Format: Policy-4 round preset round robin

Public Forum--4 prelims and elims based on entries. The first two rounds will be pre-set all others will be power

Congressional—2 preliminary sessions, one Super session

Policy topic::Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase fiscal redistribution in the United States by adopting a federal jobs guarantee, expanding Social Security, and/or providing a basic income.

Public forum topic: Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its military presence in the Arctic.

Congressional Legislation: We will use legislation from the NSDA September packet. Legislation will be available through a packet uploaded to tabroom.com by September 18th, 2023. There will be no need for schools to submit legislation.

Judges:All judges are required to judge one round beyond the elimination of their team from the tournament. Thus, all judges must be available for the first elimination round.

PLEASE IDENTIFY ALL JUDGE PRECLUSIONS AND CONFLICTS ON YOUR ENTRY. Because this is an online tournament you may have multiple judges fulfilling your commitment, do this for all judges.

PLEASE BE VERY DILIGENT IN SPECIFYING TIME FRAMES FOR JUDGE AVAILABILITY. No show fee of $25 per round charged to the school.

POLICY AND PUBLIC FORUM--You must supply one judge for every 2 teams or fraction thereof.

CONGRESSIONAL—You must supply one judge for every 10 competitors entered.

Please request hired judges via tabroom registration. Judge fees for Policy are 100, PF, and Congressional are $90 for a full judge.

Fees: $25.00 per 2-person Public Forum team.

$45.00 per 2-person Policy team.

$10.00 per student for Congressional debate

$25.00 Workshop fee per school

Payments should be mailed to West Bloomfield High School and made by check
MAKE CHECKS PAYABLE TO: West Bloomfield Debate

Send checks to: Attention: Joel Thursam

West Bloomfield high school

4925 Orchard Lake Road

West Bloomfield MI 48323

Please make an effort to have check mailed out by Friday Sept. 29th (if there is a reason for a delay please contact)

Important dates:

August 31—Registration opens on tabroom.com

September 27, 5:00pm—Registration closes—all fees and judge obligations are frozen

September 29, all fees (if not paid in person) must be mailed out and sent to West Bloomfield high school

Forfeit: We will use a 15-minute rule for competitors and judges. If you are more than 15 minutes late you risk forfeit for that round. Teams of offending judges will forfeit and hired judges will not be paid if they are late. Please relay the importance of timeliness to your students and your judges.

Contact information: Please direct all correspondence to Joel Thursam

Joel.thursam@wbsd.org Email is the best

586-292-4429 Cell Phone (this is a new number)

ADDITIONAL TOURNAMENT INFORMATION: Additional information will be available in downloadable format on tabroom.com at a future date. Check back later. We will email those entered once information is posted.

Workshop and Tournament Schedule

Registration7:45-8:15

General Meeting8:30All Students including Workshop

Round 19:00

Workshop Begins9:30Workshop

Round 210:15Workshop continues

Round 311:30Workshop continues

Lunch12:30All Students including Workshop (food for sale or bring your own)

Round 41:30Workshop students will watch and flow this round

Debrief Round2:30Workshop students will debrief the round

Awards3:00Workshop ends

Semi-Finals3:30

Final Round4:45