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Dear Fellow Debaters:
The St. Sebastian’s Debate Team cordially invites you to participate in our fifteenth NOVICE Parliamentary Extemporaneous Debate Tournament on Sunday, October 11, 2020. The tournament will consist of three rounds of Parliamentary debate conducted entirely on Zoom. We will be debating straight resolutions and using only points of information (no points of order, personal privilege or heckling). Each school may register one or two four-person novice teams (teams should include a judge as well; St. Sebastian’s will not provide judges). Schools may register by e-mail to: michael_nerbonne@stsebs.org. Please respond by Friday, October 2. There will not be any fee for this debate, but we will be sending out awards (plaques and/or certificates). If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me at (617) 462-3651.
The schedule for the day is as follows:
| 10:00 – 11:00 am | Confirmation of Registration |
| 11:30 – 12 noon | Judges’ and Debaters’ Meeting |
| 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Round One |
| 1:00 – 2:00 pm | Round Two |
| 2:00 – 3:00 pm | Round Three |
The maximum length and order of speeches are as follows:
| Prime Minister | 5 minutes |
| First Opposition Speaker | 8 minutes |
| Minister of the Crown | 8 minutes |
| Leader of the Opposition | 8 minutes |
| Prime Minister’s Rebuttal | 3 minutes |
A 30-second grace period will be allowed for each debater, after which the speech will be terminated. The Government will be given 2 minutes to define the terms in the room with the Opposition and the judge, followed by a 10-minute preparation time for both teams. The Government Team should repair to the hallway for the preparation period. Debaters are strictly forbidden from consulting any reference materials during the preparation period or during the debate. Violation of this rule will warrant disqualification from the tournament.
Information on rules, scoring, points of information, etc. can be found in the rules section of our league website at www.daneis.org. Please see the five PDFs under the heading “DANEIS Parliamentary Debate with POIs.” We ask that your debaters and judges be thoroughly familiar with all of this information prior to the tournament as we will have just a short time for the judges’ and debaters’ briefing on the day of the debate. There are also a couple of helpful videos in the members’ section of the website.
The purpose of this letter is to invite schools to indicate their preliminary registration for the Tournament. We will be providing more information with all of the Zoom details in the coming weeks.
We look forward to “seeing” you on October 11, and express our appreciation for your participation.
Michael P. Nerbonne
Debate Coach