2015 Inaugural Husky Invitational at NortheasternOctober 3rd – 4th, 2015

The Northeastern University Debate Society would like to invite you to attend the 2015 Inaugural Northeastern University Invitational, hosted on October 3rd – 4th in Boston, MA. We will be offering bids to the Speech TOC in Lexington, KY. Additionally, we have received Massachusetts State Tournament sanctioning in Debate. We’re excited to be bringing a new invitational to the national circuit with high-quality judging, 13 events, a highly competitive round robin, and top-notch competition.

Registration

Registration will open on August 10th, 2015 and close at midnight on September 26th, 2015. Registration fees will be as follow:

Lincoln-Douglas: $60 Congress: $50Policy: $75 Public Forum: $75Ind. Speech Events: $35 Duo Interp.: $55

Both judge and student registration will happen exclusively through Tabroom.com. Please make sure all of your judges have a registered tabroom.com account linked to an email address.

Judging

Judging requirements will be as follows:

Lincoln Douglas, Public Forum: 1 judge for every 3 entries or fraction thereofPolicy: 1 judge for every 2 entries or fraction thereofSpeech: 1 judge for every 6 entries or fraction thereofCongress: 1 judge per school

All judges are obligated to the first outround or one outround beyond their school’s elimination. All judges must be registered by midnight on September 26th. A limited number of judges will be available for hire at $150 apiece, but they cannot be unhired after September 26th.. All judges who miss rounds will be subject to a $50 fine per round and may risk the expulsion of their students from the tournament. Please do not skip rounds; tournaments tend to work better when the rounds actually happen.

We plan to combine the PF and Congress judge pools, so please make sure to register judges that are experienced or capable of judging both events.

Drop Fees

A drop fee will be assessed for all drops/changes after Wednesday September 30 th (11:59pm). This fee will be $50 in all events, and applies to judges as well. Additionally, no refunds will be given to drops made after the close of the registration deadline of September 26 th. Keep in mind that the drop fee is in addition to the no-refund deadline. Please be respectful of all deadlines.

Awards

Awards will be given for all elimination round participants, along with the top ten speakers in PF, LD, and policy. The tournament reserves the right to reduce the number of speaker awards given pending

registration numbers. Sweepstakes will be awarded to the highest-performing schools in debate, speech, and overall. We will not ship awards.

Format

PF, LD, and Policy will all be using an online balloting system. PF and LD will have split JV/Varsity divisions, but we reserve the right to collapse the competitor pools if the fields are not workable. If this is the case, schools will be able to drop JV entries without a fee. This means that all judges in these events must be registered on Tabroom.com with an account linked to an email address. In these events, breaks will be determined based on record, high/low adjusted points, double- adjusted points, opponent’s record, total points, judge variance, and flip of a coin, in that order.

The tournament reserves the right to reduce any event by one or more elimination rounds and/or cancel an event if registration numbers are too low.

Debate will be tabbed by Sheryl Kazmereck (Lexington High School) and Matthew Hoyle (NEU); Congress will be tabbed by Will Smith (NEU) and Carla Traconis (Harvard); Speech will be tabbed by Andrew Monagle (Ridge) and William Cooper.

Lincoln Douglas Debate

The resolution will be the September-October 2015 NSDA topic for both divisions. LD will follow NSDA rules and will have 4 minutes of prep time. We will be splitting Varsity/JV competition pools. We reserve the right to collapse into a single pool if competition does not allow for 2 pools. The judging pool will be combined.

Policy Debate

Policy will use the 2015-2016 NSDA resolution and NSDA rules with 10 minutes of prep time.

Public Forum Debate

PF will follow all NSDA rules but give 4 minutes of prep time to each team. The tournament will be using the NSDA topic for September/October of 2015.

Congressional Debate

Chambers will be comprised of no more than 20 students. Breaks will be determined by total ranks, head-to-head, reciprocal ranks, speech scores, and reverse reciprocal ranks, in that order. Finals will feature a scenario; all outrounds will use 30-second periods of direct CX. Legislation must be submitted to smith.william@husky.neu.edu by September 19th and will be released on September 24th with details on the finals scenario.

Speech

Students will be limited to entering a maximum of three events. Events will be scheduled into two flights – flight A will consist of EXT, DI, DUO and OI, and flight B will consist of Impromptu, HI, OO, POI, and Declamation. Students will be responsible for making it to all of their rounds on time. Students may use the same source material in only one event; students performing the same source material in more than one event by tab’s judgment will be disqualified from both events. EXT, OO, DI, HI, POI and DUO will follow NSDA rules and guidelines. OI and Declamation will follow NCFL rules and guidelines (Declamation will be restricted to 1st and 2nd

year students). Impromptu will use MSDL rules and guidelines. We will use the NCFL’s guidelines for published material in interp events. The grace period will be 30 seconds for all speech events. Competitors who exceed the grace may not receive a rank of 1 in the round. A participant may only be penalized for a time violation if the judge has used a precise timing device and notes the penalty on the ballot. Tabbing will be cumulative throughout the tournament, with the worst prelim score dropped. We will advance students in each round based first on cumulative ranks, then on reciprocals, then on head-to-head. EXT finals round will feature cross-examination as per NSDA rules.

MJP

Our tournament will be using mutual judge preference in Policy and LD. Pref sheets will go up on September 25th and must be completed through Tabroom.com. Pref sheets will be due on September 30th. Although pref sheets are not required, we highly recommend completing them; those who do not will be at a severe disadvantage. We reserve the right to switch to strike sheets if the pool cannot support MJP.

Additionally, all PF teams will have 3 strikes available.

Food

All competitors will be responsible for getting food on their own. Eateries on campus include Chicken Lou’s, Rebecca’s Café, Au Bon Pain, and more. For a complete listing, look here. A judges’ lounge with light refreshments will be available on Saturday and Sunday.

Contacts

Tournament Email: nuvite15@gmail.comTournament Director: Monisha Reginald (617-633-9539)Equity Officer: Josh Spiegel (516-782-6403)Tab: 617-633-9539 (Debate), 845-800-8285 (Congress), 732-687-2644 (Speech)Locked Rooms/Tab Auditor: Pete Falk (732-570-2885)

Registration Discounts

We are willing to reduce registration fees for UDL schools and schools travelling large distances. Send an email to nuvite15@gmail.com for more information.

Safety Policy

Northeastern University requires a few forms from all competitors and chaperones in order to ensure that campus remains a safe place for all tournament participants. All students must fill out a parental consent form. All chaperones, judges, and observers must fill out self-disclosure forms, and watch a ten-minute video on the university's policies upon arrival at the tournament. All forms, which can be found at this website, may either be sent to nuvite15@gmail.com or handed in at registration. We must also request that at no point during the tournament are there any situations where an adult and student are alone in a one-on-one interaction. Toward that end, there will be at least one observer stationed in each Extemp round. We apologize for any inconveniences that these restrictions may cause.

SCHEDULEPre-Registration will occur at one of our partner hotels on Friday (10/2) from 7:00pm-10:00pm.

PF/LD

Sat., October 3rd, 20158:00-8:45 AM: On-site registration for local schools

9:15 AM: Round 1 PF/LD

11:30 AM: Round 2 PF/LD

2:00 PM: Round 3 PF/LD

4:30 PM: Round 4 PF/LD

7:00 PM: Round 5 PF/LD

Sun., October 4th, 2015

9:00 AM: PF Runoff (If necessary)/LD Round 6

11:00 AM: PF/LD Octa

1:00 PM: PF/LD Quarter

2:15 PM: PF/LD Semis

3:30 PM: Finals

5:30 PM: AwardsPolicy

Sat., October 3rd, 2015

8:00-8:45 AM: On-site registration for local schools

9:15 AM: Round 1 Policy

11:15 AM: Round 2 Policy

2:00 PM: Round 3 Policy

4:00 PM: Round 4 Policy

5:30 PM: Awards

Sun., October 5th, 2015

9:00 AM: Round 5 Policy

11:00 AM: Policy Semis

2:00 PM: Policy Finals

5:30 PM: Awards

Speech

Sat., October 3rd, 2015

8:00-8:45 AM: On-site registration for local schools

9:15 AM: Round 1 Speech A

10:30 AM: Round 1 Speech B

11:45 AM: Round 2 Speech A

1:30 PM: Round 2 Speech B

2:45 PM: Round 3 Speech A

4:00 PM: Round 3 Speech B

5:15 PM: Round 4 Speech A

6:30 PM: Round 4 Speech B

Sun., October 5th, 2015

10:00 AM: Round 5 Speech A

11:15 AM: Round 5 Speech B

1:30 PM: Speech Outround 1

3:00 PM: Speech Outround 2

4:30 PM: Speech Outround 3 (TENTATIVE)

5:30 PM: Awards

Congress

Sat., October 3rd, 2015

8:00-8:45 AM: On-site registration for local schools

9:15AM-12:15 PM: Session 1

2:00-5:00 PM: Session 2

Sun., October 5th, 2015

9:00AM-12:00 PM: Session 3

1:00PM-4:00 PM: Finals

5:30 PM: Awards