NITOC 2013 Debate Format Information
Exciting changes are being planned for debate at NITOC 2013! There are a couple of major driving forces necessitating this year’s changes.
The first is that Parliamentary Debate is a NITOC event for 2013.
The inclusion of Parli into the NITOC schedule requires some changes to the way in which Lincoln Douglas and Team Policy debate will be competed. Previously, LD and TP required 15 rounds of debate to complete the Double Elimination format. The addition of Parli means that there must be fewer rounds of LD and TP debate. The Stoa Board did not like the option of decreasing the break from Triple Octofinals to just Double Octofinals. Although this would allow fewer Double Elimination Outrounds, it would have occurred at the expense of not advancing some students/teams with 4-2 records. The Board desires that all students/teams with a 4-2 or better record should break at Nationals. Double Elimination Outrounds cannot be successfully run with partial breaks, so the bracket has been filled at previous NITOCs with a significant percentage of the 3-3 students/teams advancing. Experience at NITOC has shown that 3-3 students/teams can advance to finals and win the National Championship. These students/teams are excellent debaters; sometimes they are the best debaters. No one would argue that these students/teams were not deserving of their Championship Awards.
So the Board has made the bold decision to adopt a new outround protocol that requires fewer debate rounds but advances all LD/TP students/teams with a 3-3 or better record to Outrounds at NITOC 2013!
The second factor driving this change is the need to simplify the outround tabulation process. As our numbers of competitors and events has grown, the workload placed on the Tab team has increased while the time available to do that work has tightened. Our previous Double Elimination outround protocol was very labor intensive, and a change was necessary in order to help keep NITOC on schedule and reduce the burden on Tab.
Consequently, for LD and TP debate, NITOC 2013 will be a Quadruple Elimination tournament!
The Board believes this will meet the unique needs at this year’s NITOC. Basically, a LD/TP student/team must lose four times before they are eliminated from this year’s National Championship.
For those of you interested in all the details, you may click to view the complete
NITOC 2013 Debate Protocol.