Three Announcements re Tournament Four — Joint LCC/"A" Conference

Three matters pertaining to the joint LCC/”A” Conference Tournament Four (January 11th -12th @ Schurz H.S., 3601 N. Milwaukee Ave.), determined at the Q2 (second quarter) CDL Coaches’ Council meeting this week.

(i)

The previewing policy that will be enforced will be the same as the T6 previewing policy. It works like this. There will be a runnable case list for this tournament made up only of the affirmative cases that are previewed for this tournament specifically. The four Core Files affirmative cases are by rule runnable, so they are the only four cases currently runnable at T4. None of the affirmative cases that have been previewed in the “A” Conference T1 – T3 are on the T4 runnable case list — it has been wiped clean — only cases that are previewed for T4 are runnable.

Each school can preview one affirmative case per division (Varsity and JV), using the T4 previewing form. The hard deadline is Thursday, December 20th, 3:30pm. Previews that are submitted after the deadline, or before the deadline incomplete, will not be accepted. All previews should be sent to David, davidsong@resources.chicagodebates.org.

All of the previewed cases will be added to the T4 runnable case list. We’ll post that, and all of the previews themselves, within a couple days of the previewing deadline. A case on the runnable case list can be run by any team at the tournament, in the division in which it appears on the runnable case list (Varsity or JV or both).

Let us know if you have any questions — and ask now, so that you can have time to submit a preview if you would like to.

(ii)

The joint LCC/”A” Conference Tournament Four will break to the quarter-finals (same schedule as T2 — schedule to be posted soon), but teams ranked 9th – 16th after the prelims will (a) be given an Octo-Finalist award at the Awards Ceremony, (b) earn Medal Count points for their school, and (c) be eligible for the 2013 Chicago Debate Championship.

(iii)

All judges at the joint LCC/”A” T4 should be completely unbiased between conferences. But they also should briefly announce before the debate their preferences (for arguments, style — read, “speed” — etc.), and they should then enforce those preferences when completing the ballot. If a judge tells both teams before a debate that he doesn’t like “fast talk” and will ignore any argument made at a high rate of speed, and then some of the debaters ignore the warning and blaze through their arguments anyway, the judge should act on the warning and completely ignore the arguments made in “fast talk.”

When “A” conference judges express frustration about LCC “fast talk,” it’s a little hard to understand, since they have the power of the ballot. If on the other hand they are expressing frustration that the better debating is being done at a higher rate of speed, that’s another matter: National Circuit influenced debaters often speak faster than conversational speech, but they also often do an immense amount of work and preparation, making both their arguments and their argumentation highly developed and refined. Do not vote against the better argumentation because you don’t like its influences, but do tell the debaters your preferences prior to the debate and expect the debaters to adapt to them, implementing your preferences as you warned the debaters you would prior to the round.