4 Week Mini Tournament --- Guidelines

Mini-Tournament Guidelines

1. The purpose of the 4 Week Mini-Tournament is to provide students with an opportunity to participate in practice debates against other labs and to be critiqued by instructors with whom they might not otherwise interact. It is not a competitive tournament. Students should continue to work with one another to create excellent, challenging debates. Students that do not comply with these requirements or that otherwise create an unproductive or hostile environment will be removed from the tournament.

2. Students may only utilize evidence that has been produced and released at camp on the official SDI wiki, but not all files released on the SDI wiki may be used. The following files may be used in debates involving one or more teams from the GRSTW, and GMS labs:

Affirmatives/Case Negs -

Saudi Coalition

Taiwan

Gender Aff (T-USFG and Cap K from Neg file can only be read against the Gender Aff)

Biden Mechanism

Negative -

DAs---

Cred Bad DA

Debt Ceiling Politics

Economy DA

Russia Fill-In DA

Ks---

Security K

T---

T - substantial

T - reduce

T - reduce - not eliminate

T - reduce - permanence

Cores

Hegemony

These files can be found on the 2019 SDI Dropbox under the main folder and "4 Week Files." If you are unsure whether something is allowed or not, consult the above list. Is the file on the list? Then it may be used. Is the file not on the list? Then it may not be used. No evidence from any other sources (backfiles, other camps, personal files, original work, etc.) may be used.

3. Students may only utilize arguments contained in the files listed above. They may not create new positions or arguments (including by taking evidence from multiple files and combining it together). The purpose of the 4 Week Mini-Tournament is to practice debating well-prepared opponents on arguments that both sides are already familiar with, not to produce new arguments that can catch opponents off-guard or create an easier path to victory. Plan, counterplan, and critique alternative texts may not be changed. If you are unsure about whether something is allowed or not, it is probably not allowed.

4. After the pairings for a given round are released, affirmative teams should immediately disclose the full text of their 1AC to the negative team they are debating. Negative teams should then ask the affirmative team if they would like the negative to disclose its off-case positions. If the affirmative requests disclosure, the negative team should tell the affirmative which off-case positions will be read (including the specific impact modules for disadvantages). If the affirmative would prefer that the negative not disclose their arguments so that they can better simulate the pressure of a tournament debate, the negative should not disclose.

5. Decisions from the debates will not be announced by the judge. They will enter a decision in Tabroom to facilitate later pairings but will not tell students who they voted for. Judges will provide feedback as they do in practice debates. The tournament is not perfectly paired with fidelity to the bracket and announcement of decisions distracts from the point of the tournament - practice debates where the teams have skill parity.

6. Debates involving two teams from the HSS labs will have less restrictive argument limits and different disclosure requirements. These will be shared by your instructors. Debates involving one HSS team and one non-HSS team will follow the general requirements detailed above.