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October 19, 2020

Fellow debaters and coaches:

The St. Paul’s School Debate Team cordially invites you to attend our Eleventh Annual Invitational Debate Tournament in Honor of Secretary of State John F. Kerry, to be held via Zoom on Sunday, November 15th, 2020.

The tournament is open to both advanced and novice teams, and you are welcome to enter no more than four teams total (two four-person teams in each division). You must also provide one judge for each four-person team. In accordance with DANEIS rules, only those who have participated in no more than six previous interscholastic tournaments, or those who have not debated in the last fifteen calendar months, may compete as novices. We request that coaches use their discretion. No fees will be collected for participation, and, unfortunately, we will not be able to provide trophies.

The tournament will be Oregon-style Prepared and will consist of three rounds. Pairs will debate on the same side of the resolution for all three rounds. The resolution is:

Resolved, that the United States should establish a NATO-like alliance in Asia.

Information on Oregon-Style cross-examination debate can be found in the rules section of our league website at www.daneis.org. Although there will be an opening information session, we request that debaters and judges be thoroughly familiar with the rules and expectations of cross-ex debate before the tournament.

Please let us know by October 30th how many advanced and novice teams you will bring by emailing this information to Andrew Gray (agray@sps.edu). Once we hear from you, and closer to the tournament date, we will send you a request for the names of participating students to enter into our scoring system.

If there are any changes in the number of teams, names of participants, or positions they are debating (affirmative or negative), please contact us as soon as possible prior to the tournament. If the changes are last minute, on the morning of the debate, it is imperative that you call (617-800-7903) so that the schedule of debates, and/or the appropriate information in our scoring database, can be adjusted in time for a smooth start. If a student drops out at the last minute, we will expect his or her partner to perform all speeches for that two-person team.

In the coming weeks we will reach out again with more information regarding Zoom details. We send this letter in order to share the resolution and to invite schools to register their teams.

We hope to see many of you on November 15th and express our appreciation for your participation.
Sincerely,

Isabel Maney, Caleb Lee, and Khuan-Yu Hall, Debate Captains

Andrew Gray, Dave Camden, and Bob Gile, Coaches