Updated Sunday schedule is below

Villiger Invitational
Public Forum 2023

Rules, policies, and procedures for Public Forum at the Villiger Invitational, November 18-19, 2023. This document will be updated during the tournament as needed. Participants in the tournament are accountable for all rules explained within - we’re counting on you to read it, and holding you to it.

Note: Do not rely on the tabroom blasts! Texts no longer exist, and emails are inconsistent. But you can enable browser alerts on all devices - see the bell icon in the top right of tabroom on both your computer and phone!

Schedule

Judge Notes and Expectations

Event Rules

Equity and Inclusion

Navigating St. Joseph’s University

You can access a PDF campus map here. Public Forum sites:

• Campion Hall (#17) - tab, cafeteria, some prelims
• Merion Hall (#39) - most prelims
• Connelly Hall (#37)
• Cardinal Foley Center (#38)
• Bellarmine Hall (#10) - SUNDAY
• Post Hall (#9) - SUNDAY

Contact Information

Email: helpmepftab@gmail.com

Text (do not call): ‪(215) 436-9130‬

Tab: 3rd floor of Campion Hall

Judges lounge: Presidents Lounge, Campion Hall

Please note that students should only be contacting the tournament regarding missing persons, round-related emergencies, or equity concerns. All other communications should come to tab through a coach.

Announcements/Updates

11/19/23 8:46am - schedule updated for single-flighted Doubles

Debaters, please note: you must purchase cafeteria passes by 1pm!

Schedule

PF Schedule -- prelim rounds DOUBLE flighted

All participants should arrive at the In Room Time. Coordinate email chains for evidence sharing during this time. Send a message to tab if anyone is not present 5 min after In Room Time. Unassigned judges should be in the judges lounge OR Merion Hall lobby areas by the In Room Time. 

Forfeit time is the start time. ONLY TAB DECLARES FORFEITS.

Saturday, November 18

Note: the schedule is an attempt to get everyone a chance to eat at the dining hall in Merion. You will not have a lot of time, so do not delay - judges should vote, eat, and give feedback later!

Sunday, November 19

Tournament Format

The first two rounds are randomly paired; rounds 3-5 are power matched. We will break to Doubleoctofinals.

Judge Notes and Expectations

Judges: thank you! Tournaments do not exist without you!

Before the Tournament

• Update your paradigm - debaters use judge paradigms to decide how to best adapt to the judge, so tell them what kind of debates you want to see! Be sure your paradigm is honest and accurate - your jokes are both not funny and not understood by people who don’t know you, which are the people who read your paradigm

Before Rounds

• If you received a blast message for your round assignment:

• PLEASE CLICK TO ACKNOWLEDGE YOU HAVE RECEIVED THE BALLOT. We don’t need to know when the round starts, we need to know that you know you are judging it. We trust you to start on time once you are on the way.
• ONLY THE ASSIGNED JUDGE MAY JUDGE. YOU MAY NOT (NEVER EVER) ALLOW SOMEONE ELSE TO JUDGE IN YOUR NAME. YOU MAY NOT FIND A SUBSTITUTE JUDGE.
• You can be fined for not reporting to your room on time. If the TAB Room has to substitute a new/different judge in for your assigned round, you will be fined.

• Once you are in your room:

• If your ballot shows the wrong sides according to the debaters, refresh the page! If you clicked in before they finished the flip, it might need to be reset.
• If debaters are missing at In Room Time, send a message to tab text or email tab at the address at the top of this document (you don’t need to leave to tell us!).
• Start the round by the start time. Do not begin until all judges’ ballots say the same sides that the debaters think they are on!

• If you did NOT receive a blast message for your round assignment:

• Double-check the pairings to be sure you are unassigned!
• Judges who are not assigned a round are on standby and must be in the judges lounge at In Room Time for possible substitutions.
• You can be fined if we need you and cannot find you.

During Rounds

• Flow (take notes)
• Keep time
• Enter comments on tabroom between speeches or during prep time
• That’s it. Do not ask questions, answer questions, comment on arguments, or get involved in the debate in any way

After Rounds

1. Quickly read any evidence that is crucial to making your decision.
2. Confirm (verbally) that the sides listed on your ballot are correct.
3. DO NOT CONFER WITH OTHER JUDGES except to confirm that sides are correct. Judges must decide the winner independently.
4. Enter points (following the scale; see ballot and below) and a decision (must be one winner and one loser).
5. Confirm decision in tabroom. Write the winning SCHOOL and SIDE in your RFD. Help debaters and coaches by explaining the argument that caused you to vote.
6. Disclose your decision out loud. This is a double-check that the sides were entered correctly. You are not required to explain your vote out loud, or to answer questions from the debaters (though both are encouraged as long as they stay within the schedule). You are required to say who won!
7. Complete comments later, especially if you have another flight - comments remain editable until the end of the tournament

Rules Violations

Please consult tab before deciding that something in the round warrants punishment for violating the rules, excepting the evidence violation process described below.

Decision Timer

Judges have 65 minutes from the ROUND START TIME (not when you click start, not when you really start, but the scheduled start time) for each flight to submit their decisions. This countdown is visible on the ballot. This rule exists a) to keep us on schedule, b) to encourage debaters to minimize wasted time within rounds, and c) to prevent judges from overanalyzing every piece of evidence in a round.

This should create an incentive for all participants to start on time (or early!), move swiftly through the round, and quickly notify tab of any tech issues or missing persons. It may NOT be used to justify cutting time from speeches, crossfires, prep, or tech time.

Judges who have not decided by the decision deadline will be visited by grumpy tab staff. The ballot does not disappear when the timer ends - even if you exceed the time allotted, finish the round and vote as normal!

Remember that the decision timer is for points and the winner. You can always go back and enter more comments until the end of the tournament!

Obligations

Schools must provide judges for preliminary and elimination rounds. Tournaments can only function with enough school judges to provide diverse judging, especially on elimination panels, and requires that you will serve beyond your team’s participation in the tournament, which is necessary at every tournament and always will be.

Please consult the table below to know when your obligation is complete.

Judges are provided by school and not by entry; if your child is eliminated but your school is not, your obligation continues. ALL of Sunday’s judges from a school remain obligated and are not interchangeable. Please see the link to the tabroom video below for some tips on how to find out if your school is still competing in your division. This is a question to ask your coach, not the tab staff.

Coaches may have arranged different days of assignments for different judges, which is fine. You are obligated for all the rounds in your assigned time slot, even if the tournament is off schedule. We will not make exceptions. We are not responsible for prior engagements you didn’t think would conflict - we can’t schedule around your life, but you can schedule other judges in advance to be sure your school is covered for all rounds.

Advice

• A great resource for judge training: https://sites.google.com/view/judge-training/home
• A description of good and bad ballot writing: Debate Ballot Examples
• A set of event explainers and sample rounds with commentary: PCFL Resources and Videos

Event Rules

Coin Flips

Following NSDA rules, the round begins with a coin flip. The winner of the flip may choose which side of the topic to defend OR which speaking position to uphold. The other team makes the alternative choice.

NSDA Campus/Tabroom.com will manage the coin flip. Five minutes after a pairing is released, the teams will be notified who won the flip, enabling that team to make their selection. Debaters must check their email for the tabroom link! If they miss their chance, the other team will be given the choice. When they have chosen, or if five minutes elapses without a choice, the second team will be offered the remaining choice.

Missing the flip email, if it works for everyone else, is your problem. If a system-wide error occurs, judges will manage the flip in the room - tab will notify judges if this is necessary, judges may NOT flip unless notified by tab.

Structure of a Round

Constructives - 4 min

Crossfire between 1st speakers - 3 min

Rebuttals - 4 min

Crossfire between 2nd speakers - 3 min

Summaries - 3 min

Grand Crossfire - 3 min

Final Focus - 2 min

The structure of a round is not modifiable, with the exception that speakers are not required to use all of their speech/crossfire time. That time is simply absorbed, not transferred to other activities.

Prep time

3 minutes - teams may ask for prep time in between any two elements of the round and may divide their prep time in any increments.

Calling for and sharing evidence

Any evidence read/cited in the round must be made available to the opponent upon request. Requests for evidence, and the time spent finding the evidence, is untimed in the round and MAY NOT be used for prep time for any debater. Teams ought to be able to find and electronically share their evidence very, very rapidly. If the time spent finding a piece of evidence is excessive, the judge may begin running prep time - however, the lack of prep time CANNOT be a reason to deny a team the chance to see their opponent’s evidence.

If a team simply cannot produce their evidence, or is out of prep time to find it, it should be tossed out of the round and not factored into your decision.

Time spent reading the opponent’s evidence must be timed in some way, either as prep time or while another speech/crossfire is underway.

Evidence challenges

The quality of evidence may be a part of the debate. In fact, good debaters make evidence comparisons. Here is a way to consider the escalation of evidence issues:

1. A team claims evidence is of low quality, from a disreputable source, uses a flawed methodology, etc. - decide this issue in the course of the debate based on the arguments made by the teams. Read the evidence after the debate if you’d like.
2. A team cannot produce evidence they read - disregard the evidence in your decision and pretend it was never mentioned
3. A team alleges that their opponent’s evidence is fabricated - this claim would, under NSDA rules, stop the round for the judge to determine win/loss in the debate based solely on the evidence challenge. Please confirm that this is a team’s intent before stopping the debate.

You can consult tab for help resolving these issues, but we cannot make the decision for you.

Debate Speaker Point Scale

Speaker points are used to give a holistic measurement of the effectiveness of the debater’s participation in the round - speaking, strategy, decorum, etc. Judges must follow the speaker point scale, regardless of what they are used to or may prefer, so that there is a fair standard across all rounds. Plus, if we have a standard, points provide meaningful feedback instead of being arbitrary and useless!

29.5-30: I wish I could frame your speeches – hard to imagine a better speaker

29.1-29.4: you were consistently excellent

28.8-29.0: you were effective and strategic, and made only minor mistakes

28.3-28.7: you hit all the right notes, but could improve (e.g. depth or efficiency)

27.8-28.2: you mainly did the right thing, but left something to be desired

27.3-27.7: you missed major things and were hard to follow

27.0-27.2: you advanced little in the debate or cost your team the round

26.0-26.9: you are not ready for this division/tournament

Below 26: you were offensive, ignorant, rude, or tried to cheat (MUST come to tab)

Low-point wins (where the winning team has fewer points than the losing team) are allowed.

Strikes

Teams in PF will be able to enter judge strikes. This precludes a judge from being assigned to a team because the team doesn’t want the judge. Teams make these decisions based on judge paradigms, which is why only teams whose judges have paradigms may enter strikes.

Strikes will be open from Wednesday at 9pm until Friday at 9pm. Teams will have 4 strikes. Tabroom.com only allows coaches to enter strikes - we cannot change that setting for you. We cannot enter your strikes after the deadline.

Conflicts

Strikes are not conflicts, and conflicts are not strikes. Strikes are for judges you don’t like, conflicts are for judges who like you too much. A conflict means that a judge is - or, more importantly, would seem to be - too friendly to the debaters, such as a former coach, former teammate, someone who cuts lots of your evidence for you, someone you worked closely with at camp, someone you are related to, or someone you had or have a personal relationship with. We may fine judges who do not report conflicts - please check the entry list and update your tabroom account with standing conflicts. For more information consult: http://www.jimmenick.com/vault/conflicts_judges.pdf

Mavericks

Public Forum is a team event. Students may not be registered as mavericks. In a bid division, both partners must participate in each debate or they will forfeit the round.  After 2 such forfeits, the entry will be removed from the tournament.

Observers

This is an open tournament - rounds are open to observers. Observers must be respectful and silent, and may not interact with anyone in the round at any time. So long as they meet this condition, competitors and judges in their off flights are welcome to watch all rounds in the tournament. Observers may only be removed from a room if they are disrupting the participants or if there is not enough space in a room.

Final Round Norm

Participation in final rounds in every event is expected. In the absence of a closeout by a single school, Villiger would like to crown a true champion.

Coachovers

Should teams from the same school meet in an elimination round, we will advance the higher seed unless contacted by the coach [NOT STUDENTS] and told to do otherwise. We will not break brackets in any situation, nor will we assign judges to adjudicate a coachover. We are happy to tell the coach [NOT STUDENTS] who the higher seed is.

Equity and Inclusion

If an equity or inclusion issue arises at any time during the tournament, please fill out the equity form.

Implicit Bias Reminders

We live in a world that is filled with bias. While it may be impossible to completely separate ourselves from our worldview and the many factors that influence us on a daily basis, we can make a concerted effort to minimize the way our personal biases impact the way that we interact with students within this activity. The vast majority of adults within this activity do a phenomenal job of this throughout the season but we wanted to put out a few  reminders for everyone to take note of:

• Accents do not reflect intelligence.
• Race does not indicate socioeconomic status.
• Gender is fluid.
• There is no uniform in Speech and Debate. Your personal opinions about what a student chose to wear should not be indicated on your ballot.
• Pitch is not a personal choice.
• Positions that students take while competing don’t necessarily equate to their personal beliefs.
• Your beliefs on a topic should have no bearing on how you judge a speech or performance.
• Recognize that words do not exist in a vacuum.  Avoid using charged language on your ballots.
• You are the adult in the room. As such, please be mindful of how students will interpret what they see and hear you do. Please demonstrate respect in every aspect of the word.

Content Warnings

Content warnings are intended to give speakers, judges and debaters time to prepare their minds for potentially difficult content. It is the position of this tournament that all students who might explore such content provide warnings prior to the start of the round so that all listeners can be prepared. This should not be construed as a reason to win or lose debates or to affect speech rankings, but should be done in the interests of making speech and debate as comfortable a place as possible for all participants, given the complicated world in which we live.

Please base your thinking about content warnings on the following principles:

• Content warnings cannot be used to exclude content from the round. Content warnings are designed to allow listeners to prepare for what they are about to hear.
• Announce potential content warnings before the round begins, or if the argument is unanticipated, before the relevant speech. We recommend that you follow the mantra: when in doubt, give a content warning.
• A content warning, or the lack thereof, should not determine the result of the debate. Judges should not vote based on whether or not a content warning should have been read. 
• Unless you are unable to continue in a debate, please report any issues to the Equity Office after the round. If you feel unable to continue in a debate, please request the judge to stop the debate and bring the concern to the Equity Office. This is not an issue to be resolved within the round; it stops the debate. The Equity Office will determine the next steps. If a round has stopped, the Equity Office and Tab Staff will review the situation. It does not imply an automatic loss for either side.