<p>Where are all the debaters? It's like Music, Science, and that's it. What kinda debate do you do? Lincoln-Douglas? Congress? PuF? Interp?
I'm a Lincoln Douglas person, fyi.</p>
<p>Hey Hows Lincoln Douglass? I'm a Student Congress. I have done 2 policy tourney's though. I think I like Student Congress, but most like policy? </p>
<p>What do you do in Lincoln Douglass? How is it?</p>
<p>I'm a member of JSA (the Junior State of America). Was anyone else at the Northeast Fall State last weekend? It was really cool (my first conference).</p>
<p>Hey. It's interesting how this thread gets bumped to the second page in a matter of hours. Lincoln Douglas is cool, except for the fact that its abbreviation is the same as "Learning Disabled". I'm not sure how it compares to policy, because policy is dead in NC. But in LD, you have a resolution that you argue based on your value. If your value is justice, your arguments have to uphold it. Whoever upholds their value and their opponent's value, of successfully undermine their opponent's value wins.</p>
<p>Policy's dead here, too, but I wish I'd done it instead of L-D.</p>
<p>I suppose L-D is alright, but policy is a lot more intense.</p>
<p>Yeah, in my debate class (the easiest elective ever), we're starting our Lincoln-Douglas debates...I decided to do mine on the resolution: that the Supreme Court's ruling in "Skokie v. Collin" was morally unjustifiable. I'm the affirmative...It should be ridiculously easy to argue, esp. when my opposition has no idea what he's going to say and wants to jokingly say that the Nazis were good with population control (absolutely deplorable)...Anyway, I cannot wait to make my argument.</p>
<p>In CT LD was been stopped so we only do extemp in the state tournaments. Extemp is really fun though, its more spontaneous and from general knowledge than from doing research and reading off a paper. We also go to a bunch of national tournaments like at Yale, Harvard, Columbia, UPenn, and etc. There we do L-D which I am starting to love for some reason. Its really different from extemp so it was hard to get used to but once you get used to it, you get hooked. You guys should try and make it to some of these national tournaments cuz I know school from like Seattle that come to the tournaments every year.</p>
<p>Hey It's cool that a lot of people do LD on here. I do it on the state and national level, its my main forensics event. Do you guys all participate mainly on your 'local circuits', and if so in what state (AZ for me... yeah haha)? Have you ever been to any major national tournaments before? Debate is a lot more centralized than people would like to think at first glance, despite being so variable from state to state, etc.
Anyways, keep it real.
Edited: Hey pyro, missed your post.
Despite being from AZ I've been to the Yale tournament before. Some good ones out west are Berkeley, USC, Stanford, and very prestigious but not university affiliated Greenhill, St. Marks, and the Glenbrooks in IL which is this weekend. And yeah, I agree it can be addicting, especially if you have gone to camp and have a good group of friends you see at nat'l tourns.</p>
<p>Oh god, policy debate has consumed my life. I spend hours researching and practicing every day. </p>
<p>In Kansas, we do only policy first semester, then everything else (LD, Congress, extemp, puff, etc) second semester. And we're approaching crunch time, with NFL/CFL Regionals in a few weeks...</p>
<p>I've never been to any national circuit tourneys, partly because Kansas has a rule that discourages it and partly because I haven't really been serious about debate until this year.</p>
<p>Debating is the best. However I've only done two debates, one on stem cell research and another on a local issue.</p>
<p>Just came back from a debate meeting, was judging two sophmores in a mock debate to see who would go to the next debate tournament since the people put a cap of only four teams. Was fun to see how good some of the people from last year have become.</p>
<p>I was in CX my freshman year. I quit after the first year because I was doing everything by myself, on my own time, without much support from the team. It pains me how much time I dedicated to debate, and because I had no real decent coaching, people who only had older debators to coach them were better than me. It really tears me up. I wish I could've been in the scene, even though I felt that it was a little too snobby. That's life though.</p>
<p>I do Policy and LD. But debate and forensics are dead in NJ. The only schools involved that anyone knows about are Randolph and Ridge (and maybe another). I'm trying to get my club in the NFL so we can start being awesome because the members have soo much potential. Soo our school isn't hardcore at all.</p>
<p>Anyway, our advisor has never debated in her life (note how I didn't call her our "coach") so nobody really knows what to do. I mean, I've looked up how standardized academic debate really works and everyone's like "you're so silly. there's no strategy behind debate! you just go up and say the opposite!" Gah!</p>
<p>Btw, mad props to the OP for spelling "debaters" right. The MUN club at my school wanted to write on the back of our club t-shirts "master debators". It was supposed to be an "intelligent joke". It took me two weeks to figure out because I thought "masturbator" was too obvious. Anyway, they spelled "debater" wrong and I got ****ed off.</p>
<p>There's no debate team at my school. :(</p>
<p>yeah in our school our debate team all wanted to get sweatshirts made that said "Master Debaters"</p>
<p>The idea never really went through, but when I am senior, imma make sure that we do that!</p>
<p>Nobody who's been in the activity for an extended period of time thinks that's funny. Seriously. You'll regret it.</p>
<p>well I have been in the activity for three years now (dont know if you consider that extended) but i still get a kick out of it.</p>
<p>I find it interesting that there are so many kids in competition-like debate programs. I prefer JSA, where it isn't so much competitive as collaborative, where people are encouraged to give impromptu speeches after the main speaker (who ironically only speaks at the beginning and the end). The only "winners" are the Best Speaker awards--everyone votes for the best speaker of the debate after it is over. Also, a big part of JSA is legislation--at Winter Congress, we meet at DC and write up mock legislation (i.e. a gay rights amendment, bill to stop abortion, etc.) and argue in a Congressional (either HoR or Senate, you are assigned) to get your bill passed. </p>
<p>What is the structure of "LD" or "policy" debate? Is it competitive where you can win competitions and move up levels? If so, who are the judges? I'm interested in these competitions.</p>
<p>Well I only know about LD so someone else can talk about policy. The format of LD debates goes as follows:</p>
<p>6 minutes first affirmative speech</p>
<p>3 minutes X-ex</p>
<p>7 minutes first negative speech</p>
<p>3 minutes X-ex</p>
<p>4 minutes affirmative rebuttle</p>
<p>6 minutes negative rebuttle</p>
<p>3 minutes affirmative rebuttle</p>
<p>Its pretty competitive and I think that is the best way to have it. The whole thing about winning competitions and moving up levels is more in the state level tournaments where you do the normal tournaments and if you win you can go to like the state final tournament of all the people who won. Sadly in my state they stopped doing LD and they only do extemp. I guess I will also give the format of extemp which is 2v2:</p>
<p>6 minutes first affirmative contructive</p>
<p>3 minutes X-ex</p>
<p>6 minutes first negative constructive</p>
<p>3 minutes X-ex</p>
<p>6 minutes second affirmative constructive</p>
<p>3 minutes X-ex</p>
<p>6 minutes second negative constructive</p>
<p>4 minutes first affirmative rebuttle</p>
<p>4 minutes first negative rebuttle</p>
<p>4 minutes second negative rebuttle</p>
<p>4 minutes second affirmative rebuttle</p>
<p>The national competitions are the best for LD. Its just a great experience. At yale you have like five round first two of which are random and the rest are power rounds. If you break (advance have a record of 4-1 or better), you move onto the elimination rounds. If you are crazy good then you might get a TOC bid. Which is to go to the tournament of champions.</p>
<p>Oh yeah and judges for like the state debates in CT are parents for novice ppl and more experience ppl for varsity. In the nationals its the same thing for novice but you have very experienced debate people for varsity.</p>
<p>Well, I'm a member of JSA and an LD debater :-). I like debating in JSA for being able to speak freely, but competitive debate has its perks.</p>