The Harvard Debate Tournament

	The Harvard National High School Invitational Forensics Tournament A Project of the Harvard Debate Council, a student run organization at Harvard College

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The Thirty-Fifth Annual

Harvard National Invitational Forensics Tournament

Greetings from Harvard Debate!

We are delighted to invite you to attend the thirty-fifith annual Harvard National Invitational Forensics Tournament, which will be held in Cambridge on Presidents' Day Weekend, Saturday, Sunday, & Monday, February 14-16, 2009.

All entries into the tournament will be managed through this web site. No paper invitations will be mailed. No entries by phone or fax will be accepted. Only by centralizing this function in one place can we continue to manage all of the data and allow everyone an equal chance to enter the tournament.

New Facilities! The Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, tournament headquarters for the past two decades, is embarking on a multi-year renovation project, during which time it will not be accessible to us. As a result, we will be using different facilities. The tournament will be more decentralized with each of the five different tournaments located around the Harvard campus. We understand that this arrangement will impose some challenges on schools with competitors entered in multiple tournaments. However, benefits of the new setup will include making each tournament more compact, requiring less walking around in the cold, and hopefully more comfortable accommodations than crowding everyone into CRLS.

Since we are in the process of determining which of Harvard’s many facilities we will be using, the schedules of the various tournaments remain somewhat in flux. For the time being, we will have to place caps on entries into the debate tournaments, but we will raise those caps as more rooms become available. Final schedules and locations of the various tournaments, as well as entry limits, will be posted here shortly. Stay tuned.

Return of Junior Varsity Competition. The decentralization will mean that we have fewer rooms available for team debate and public forum. However, those tournaments will now be self-contained allowing us to bring back junior varsity level competition to both.

E-registration! Since we are no longer using CRLS, we will not be able to conduct Friday night registration in the media cafeteria. We have not yet arranged an alternative location for the 2009 registration, however it will certainly not be as convenient as the media cafeteria. This makes it all the more important for all schools able to do so, to take advantage of our e-registration option. This will save considerable time and headaches on your arrival in Cambridge. To participate schools must have submitted an accurate and complete entry and fully paid their fees. Registration materials will be distributed via email or delivered to your local hotel.

What do you need to do now? The professionals at Traveline (888-642-2248 or TraveLine1@aol.com) have great discounts off of best-available airfares, exclusively for people attending the tournament. The earlier you book, the bigger the discounts. Some of our hotels fill up early, so you may wish to make reservations now. Other than that, watch this web site for future announcements. The site will be ready to take your entries on December 10, 2008.

Sincerely yours,

Sherry Hall & Dallas Perkins, Jr.

Competition Rules, Procedures, & Eligibility

Due to scheduling conflicts, no student may enter more than one of the following four tournaments. This includes Extemporaneous Speaking and Lincoln-Douglas. Students must choose between extemp and LD.

The Policy Debate Tournament

There will be two divisions, varsity and junior varsity, of two-person, switch-sides, cross-examination debate, on the national topic. We encourage coaches to enter students in the division that best approximates their skill and experience level, and we leave that judgment up to you. Time limits will be 8-3-5, with ten minutes preparation time per team. In order to maximize opportunities to participate, we must require that all teams have two members: no "mavericks." Both members of the team must attend the same school.

Vital Stats: Prelims-- Varsity: 7, Junior Varsity: 6. Elims--Double Octafinals, both divisions. Entry Limit: Schools limited to 4 teams across both divisions; this will hopefully be raised as we secure more rooms. The two divisions will have to be balanced in size; if this does not occur “naturally,” we may have to negotiate and will appreciate your flexibility.

The Public Forum Debate Tournament

There will be two divisions of public forum debate, varsity and junior varsity, on the February NFL topic, and using NFL time format and rules. We encourage coaches to enter students in the division that best approximates their skill and experience level, and we leave that judgment up to you. Both members of the team must attend the same school.

VITAL STATS: Prelims: 6 (Varsity and Junior Varsity) Elims: Double Octafinals. No Entry Limits.

The Speech Tournament

The tournament will feature competition in five events:

extemporaneous speaking (no foreign/domestic split),
original oratory,
dramatic interpretation,
humorous interpretation,
duo interpretation.

The schedule should allow responsible students to enter two of these events, and it is not unheard of to enter three. However, one person may not compete on two different duo-interpretation teams. NFL rules will govern all competitions. It is our understanding that these rules forbid scripts in interpretation events, oratory or interpretation pieces which were performed last year in NFL events, and computers in extemp prep.

VITAL STATS: Prelims: 4. Elims: Octafinals (top 56 contestants), Double-Octafinals for events with more than 300 entries (last year DI broke to doubles).

The Lincoln-Douglas Debate Tournament

There will be two divisions, varsity and junior-varsity. Both will use the January-February NFL topic.

VITAL STATS: Prelims: 6. Elims: Triple-octas in both divisions (top 64). No Entry Limit.

The Harvard National Student Congress

The The Harvard National Congress (HNC) is again directed by Brent Pesola (bpesola@mountpisgahschool.org) and Jason Wysong (jcwysong@gmail.com).

Instructions regarding bills and resolutions will ONLY be available ATFER 12:00 NOON, ON FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2009. Do not call Harvard! If you have any questions about the HNC, other than “When can we get the bill titles?” you should emai Brent at bpesola@mountpisgahschool.org. Note that the link to get titles and assignments (after January 30) is located at the bottom of the entry form for the Congress tournament

NEW REQUIREMENTS : FULL TEXT OF ALL BILLS/RESOLUTIONS REQUIRED. See details on the Congress Registration Page.

The deadline for entry and legislation submission into the Harvard National Congress tournament is FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2009.

VITAL STATS: Prelims: 3 three-hour sessions. Semi-Super Congress (top 96) Sunday. Super Congress (top 24) Monday. There will be 12 Prelim Houses, 400 contestants. Entry Limit: Schools limited to 15 entries.*

*Schools may enter 9th graders separately by creating a “Junior” school entry, even if the high school is technically 9th-12th graders. This eliminates an unfair advantage for schools whose 9th graders are at a separate campus.

General Tournament Rules

Without objection from school officials, unaffiliated entries are welcome in all tournaments. However, debate and duo team members must attend the same school. Furthermore, unaffiliated entrants must submit full payment by mail prior to registration. All judges provided by schools must be qualified, which at a minimum means a high school diploma. Any complaints about judge qualifications must be addressed to the tournament director prior to or immediately after the competition involved. All tournament directors have been authorized to impose penalties against schools whose judges do not appear for the rounds to which they have been assigned. The individual events tournament director will be prepared to enforce NFL rules if objections are brought to her attention in a timely manner.

Registration, Judging, & Fees

Entry Procedures

You must enter via this web-site. The web site will begin accepting your entries on December 10, 2008. You are responsible for entering your school and student information, and also for getting the spelling and event information correct. After you have entered the information, you should verify your entry and print out a copy of this information in addition to your invoice.

The deadline for Policy, Lincoln Douglas and Individual Events entries is February 10, 2009. The deadline for entry into the Harvard National Congress tournament is January 23, 2009. The fees for your entry will be set by midnight February 10, 2009. You will be responsible for paying the full entry fee for any entries dropped after that date.

Due to the decentralization of the tournament this year, we are requiring that you provide a cell phone number for each of your judges when you enter them. We ask that you cooperate with this requirement to allow us to track down missing ballots. Additionally, it is extremely important that you provide a working email address where we can contact you with updated information about the tournaments you are entered in, such as where you should report on Saturday morning, and any changes in entry limits.

Paying Fees and Completing Registration

Our e-registration system makes it possible for schools that have provided accurate entry information and paid their fees in advance to receive their registration materials either at their hotel or by email. We strongly encourage all schools to take advantage of e-registration.

For those schools that must pay their fees in person and/or make emergency corrections to their entries or judges, we will conduct a live registration at a place to be determined. We will post that information as soon as we have determined a location. If you have not tried e-registration before, this is a really good year to give it a try as the in-person registration will not be nearly as convenient.

STUDENTS FROM SCHOOLS WHICH DO NOT COMPLETE REGISTRATION, WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO COMPETE. Each school must register either through e-registration or in person. It is important that the persons registering be prepared to confirm all details of their school’s entry, judging, local contacts, etc., and be prepared to pay the tournament fees. We reserve the right to exclude contestants from competition if their school fails to register. If your travel to Cambridge is unavoidably delayed, please call Dallas Perkins at 617-306-4514.

It will be best to pay your fees by mail. You may obtain an invoice by downloading it from the web site.

There are no increases in any of the fees for this year's tournament.

Fees will be as follows:

Varsity Policy Debate Teams – $160.00
Junior Varsity Policy Debate Teams – $140.00
Public Forum Debate Teams -- $140.00
Lincoln-Douglas Entries – $120.00
Individual Speech Events – $60.00
Duo Interpretation Teams – $75.00
Student Congress – $75.00
School [Account Management] fee -- $50.00

Judging

Each two policy debate teams, each three LD contestants, each three public forum teams, each five speech and each ten congress entries must be accompanied by a qualified judge. No person can cover entries from different tournaments. All judges must be available for all preliminary rounds, the first elimination round, and for one round beyond elimination of the last contestant from the school that the judge represents in the tournament. All judges must be qualified, which at a minimum means a high school diploma. All schools providing judges for the three debate tournaments should be flexible as to which division judges are assigned. Schools entering students in junior varsity divisions should expect that some of their judges will be needed to cover junior varsity rounds. First year judges will generally be assigned to the junior varsity division.

Hired judging will be available for schools unable to cover the above requirements. The costs will be as follows:

Policy Debate Teams – $160.00 per team not covered
Public Forum Debate Teams -- $100.00 per team not covered
Lincoln Douglas – $80.00 per entrant not covered
Speech – $30.00 per entry not covered
Student Congress – $30.00 per entrant not covered

The Harvard National High School Invitational Forensics Tournament