Inter-Collegiate policy debate

Contents
1 General Information
2 Format of a Debate

2.1 What it looks like

3 Evidence

3.1 What a piece of evidence has
3.2 Sample piece of evidence

4 The Judge

General Information

In Inter-Collegiate Policy Debate two teams of two students advocate or oppose a resolution calling for a change in policy by the government. The style of argumentation features extensive use of citations and quotations from news sources and technical material. Inter-Collegiate policy debate is overseen by the National Debate Tournament (NDT), the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA), the National Educational Debate Association, and the Great Plains Forensic Conference. Format often involves cross examination.

Format of a Debate

The typical format of Policy Debate involves four 9-minute speeches (two speeches per each side, advocating and opposing) called "constructives" in which each team presents and introduces the arguments they will make throughout the round. Each speech is followed by a brief 3-minute cross examination period in which one member of the opposing team questions the last speaker. Also, each team receives 10 minutes of "prep time" to use throughout the debate to get prepared for their upcomming speech. The affirmative team speaks first, and their "first affirmative constructive" seeks to define the specific policy that will be debated throughout the round. After the "second negative constructive," the debate round enters the rebuttals. In rebuttal speeches, each team member has 6 minutes to go into further detail about the arguments they introduced in the constructive speeches. As a generality, no new arguments are allowed in the rebuttals, although new evidence that supports previous arguments is allowed. There is no cross examination period during these four speeches. The first speaker in the rebuttals is the opposing (negative) team, which constitutes the only time in a policy debate round in which two members of the same team will speak consecutively. This 15-minute period of negative speech is often referred to as the "negative block." The debate round ends with the "second Affirmative Rebuttal," at which point the judge will consider the arguments, vote for the winning team and sign the ballot.

What it looks like

Both teams can use their 10 minutes of "prep time" between any speech.

Evidence

In every speech there is evidence read to support the arguments of each side. "Evidence" is simply a quotation from a news source, book, scholarly journal, or personal narrative, formatted in a specific way. The pieces of evidence are put together so that each "position" is composed of several pieces of evidence that tell the story of the argument. There are several positions that are put forth in each debate round.

What a piece of evidence has

Tag Line 
A one sentence summary of the quotation that begins the piece of evidence
Short Cite 
The author's last name and year the quotation was published, followed by a blank line
Long Cite 
The author's first name, title of the article the quotation was found in, the publication the article was found in, the date publised, again followed by a blank line
Quotation 
This is the acutal meat of the evidence, or what the expert said. It can be as short as a few sentences and as long as several pages. If the quotation is several pages then the debater only reads the part that is underlined, bolded or highlighted.
Card 
This is just another word for a piece of evidence stemming from when debaters used to cut and paste their evidence on index cards

Sample piece of evidence

Politics Should Always Set the Goals of Philosophy, Never the Other Way Around.
Rorty, 95

(Richard, "Richard Rorty: Toward a Post-Metaphysical Culture," THE HARVARD REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY, SPRING 1995)

Rorty: I do see it as an inducement to involvement, and I think that Dewey did too. Dewey is saying: suppose you’re a pragmatist about truth — i.e., you think that truth is what works. The obvious question, then, is: whom does it work for? This is the question that Foucault raises. You then ask political questions about whom you want it to work for, whom you want to run things, whom you want to do good to; which come prior to philosophical questions. Then let democratic politics be what sets the goals of philosophy, rather than philosophy setting the goals of politics. Whereas Habermas seems to think that if you don’t have philosophy out there as point man, telling society and politics where to go, then you’re somehow stuck.

The Judge

The judge has the responsibility of not only voting for the side that she thinks won the round, but also giving each speaker "speaker points." This is a numerical evaluation of the debator's speaking skills ranging from 1-30. The standard variation, however, is 24-29, with 30's reserved for "the best speaker you've ever seen." Half points are allowed, such as 26.5, and at the end of a debate tournament the best speakers are recognized, even though the difference between speakers is minuscule.

See also: Inter-Collegiate policy debate