Policy

POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL

Policy Debate is a 2-person sport. It is debated in pairs. Unlike Lincoln Douglas Debate, Policy is based on Real World Concepts. These concepts include things such as "The best way to take care of our energy problem" or "The best way to help stop Russia's economic crisis". Alternatively, Lincoln Douglas Debate focuses on philosophical issues such as the death penalty or freedom of speech.

The first team (known as the Affirmative) will propose a change in policy - also known as the plan. An example of this would be, "implement a voucher school selection system in order to improve education." The negative team will then spend their speeches attacking the workability, the probable success and the benefits of the affirmative plan of action. When debating, each team is randomly chosen to go affirmative or negative. An average Policy Debate will last approximately 1.5 hours. Each year the National Forensics League will decide on a "Resolution".

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Judging Policy: Judging policy debate can be challenging. The total time available is short, the issues are complex and the judge may have personal beliefs that cloud impartiality. The judge has the responsibility of not only voting for the side that he or 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 30s reserved for "the best speaker you've ever seen." Some circuits see lay or inexperienced judges recruited from the community as an important "part of the game." Debaters in these circuits must be able to adapt from presentations to individuals with no debate experience at all, to judges who have themselves been debaters. This use of lay judges significantly impacts delivery and argumentation as the rapid-fire style and complex debate-theory arguments are frequently incomprehensible to lay judges. For this reason, other circuits restrict policy debate judging to qualified judges, generally ex-debaters. The use of lay judges, and its impact in speed, presentation and argumentation is a source of great controversy in the US high school debate community. Experienced debate judges (who were generally debaters in High School and/or College) generally carry a mindset that favors certain arguments and styles over others. Throughout time, the criterion upon which judges decide debates has changed. Currently increasingly popular within college debate, and trickling down into high school debate, is examining debate from an "offense-defense" paradigm. Because of this, it is customary for debaters to ask a judge what their experience and paradigm is for judging. Judges are encouraged to take notes during the round. There are many models for judging debate.

Analysis: logical explanation of critical issues: which team, on balance, did the better job of clearly explaining their arguments and of exposing the weakness of opponent arguments?
Proof: sufficient quantity and appropriate interpretation of evidence: which team offered the clearest understandable evidence and better applied that evidence to support their arguments?
Organization: logical and orderly presentation: which team more clearly indicated what issue was being argued at each moment, presenting a clear and easy listening path to follow?
Refutation: direct responses to issues raised by the opponents: which team displayed the better ability to critically analyze opponent arguments and develop appropriate, clear, understandable responses with logical argument and effective use of evidence?

Lincoln Douglas

Lincoln Douglas Debate is modeled after the 1860 debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. Topics considered in LD are of a moral, ethical, and philosophical nature. They tend to be less political than Policy Debate and rely more on ethics, values, and philosophy.

In past years, LD has focused on the ethics of cloning, the privacy rights of a candidate for public office, the importance of cultural sensitivity in the business world, and the morality of nuclear bombs. Lincoln Douglas debaters construct a written case that outlines their arguments, which support a certain value or values.

After each debater reads his or her case, there are several shorter rounds of rebuttals and clashes. Each side receives different amounts of time for different rebuttals and arguments. It is important that in rebuttals students present and continue the debate in the form of spontaneous rebuttals that should not bring up any new arguments that weren't already addressed in the cases. LD is considered the second most intensive debate event and meets twice a week for an hour an a half per meeting.

Judging LD:Judging an LD round can be very difficult, especially for inexperienced judges. Not only are the questions intrinsically complex, but the typical debater uses arguments and citations from philosophers and other writers that the judge may not be familiar with. Additionally, LD topics often involve issues where the judge may have a strongly held opinion for or against the resolution. Being neutral and judging on the basis who presented the most sound argument (not the ideological leaning of the argument) can be difficult. To avoid this potential problem, resolutions are usually rather abstract and do not touch on "hot button" issues of the day such as abortion or gay marriage.

In some regional or circuit tournaments with multiple divisions, inexperienced judges are most commonly placed in the Novice division, while the Junior Varsity and Varsity divisions enjoy a more experienced pool of judges (sometimes called critics). Other regional circuits value the difficulty of debating in front of inexperienced judges, and recruit "lay" judges from the community in order to provide the debaters with the experience of attempting to explain complex issues to lay people. These judges are typically friends or relatives of debaters from the sponsoring school. Some circuits require all LD judges for rounds above the novice level to meet training requirements. Another popular option is to make use of lay judges for the rounds, but offer them a brief training or tutorial beforehand to prepare and inform them about the nature of the debate.