Policy Debate I

Policy Debate: Rules & Overview

Policy debate focuses on the advocacy of a plan or policy action. The affirmative team should outline the harms in the current system or some sort of need. Then they should present a policy that would satisfy the need they have outlined. In addition the affirmative may discuss additional advantages to the policy. The negative team may argue that the affirmative policy fails to meet the need they have outlined (i.e. the affirmative does not solve). The negative also has the option to present disadvantages to the policy (the policy may solve the problem, but it will create new problems). Other ways do exist for structuring an affirmative case or negative strategy, but in the end the debate should focus on whether or not a particular policy is an appropriate course of action.

Stock Issues
Often, judges view the round in terms of stock issues, or major questions that both teams need to address. They are:

• Inherency: Does the plan exist in the status quo (the way things are now)?
• Harms: What’s the problem with the status quo?
• Significance: How big is the problem in the status quo?
• Solvency: Does the affirmative plan solve the problem?
• Topicality: Does the affirmative plan meet the terms of the resolution? Is it an example of the resolution? In the traditional view, the affirmative has to successfully defend the argument that their plan meets all five of the stock issues: it can’t exist already (inherency), it has to address an important problem (harms and significance together), it has to fix that important problem (solvency), and it has to be an example of the resolution, to ensure a fair debate (topicality). If the negative can prove that the affirmative violates any one of the stock issues – for example, that the plan won’t fix the problem (solvency) – then the negative wins the debate.

Disadvantages
Sometimes an affirmative plan can solve for all five of the stock issues and still be a bad idea. For example, an affirmative plan to dissolve the entire U.S. prison system would certainly remedy the problem of excessive detention, doesn’t exist in the status quo, and very substantially decreases the government’s ability to detain without charge. However, there are still extremely good reasons not to vote for such a plan: prisoners might run rampant on the streets; people would be less afraid to commit crimes since they would know that there were no prisons to punish them for breaking the law; lots of prison staff would be out of employment, and so forth. A disadvantage is a somewhat more structured way of arguing that the negative consequences of a plan provide a reason not to vote for it. Disadvantages have several important parts:

• Uniqueness: is the disadvantage happening in the status quo? If a disadvantage argues that an affirmative plan will cause the economy to stagnate (stop growing), then it can be proved non-unique if an affirmative effectively argues that the economy is already stagnating and, hence, the plan wouldn’t make the economy any worse than it already is.
• Link: does the plan cause the problem to happen? If a disadvantage argues that releasing detainees held at Guantanamo Bay would cause terrorism to increase, the negative has to prove that prisoners there are involved in terrorism and that their captivity is important to preventing terrorism.
• Impact: does the plan cause something bad to happen? If a disadvantage argues that limiting the government’s ability to conduct sneak and peek searches under Section 213 of the USA PATRIOT Act would impair the government’s law enforcement ability, the negative has to prove that law enforcement by the government is a good thing.

Cross-Examination

The questioner shall control the use of the time and may interrupt the respondent, but may not comment on the answers or make any statement of his/her own views.

Free Policy Debate Files

Summer debate camps have started providing their camp files for free. These files can serve as an excellent building block for the season. Below you will find links to several sites with free files for this year’s military topic, but first, a look at back files.

Back Files – In policy debate many the same arguments will return year after year and previous year’s files that are still useful are considered back files. These files can also be very useful for student congress competitors. One place to turn for back files is Planet Debate as described a little below. You can also find a large but less user friendly list here.

Planet Debate – Planet Debate is a comprehensive debate website. It includes both free and pay resources. When using the links keep in mind that free files are combined with pay files. If you want only free files make sure that evidence link has (FREE) listed next to it.

Military Topic Files – Below you will find links to free files for the military topic. In the world DEBATE-Kansas City here half of our student congress docket relates to the policy debate topic, these are useful for congress and obviously policy debate.

• Planet Debate – Keep in mind, only files with “(FREE)” next to them are of no charge.
• National Debate Coaches Association – This page contains a link to each year’s camp files. You want 2010-2011.
• National Association for Urban Debate Leagues – The NAUDL has provided a complete argument and research kit. Check it out!

Directly from the camps:

• CNDI Policy Debate Evidence (Berkeley Debate Camp)
• ENDI Policy Debate Files (Emory National Debate Institute)
• Georgetown Debate Seminar Evidence
• Michigan Debate Institute Files
• UNTIF Policy Debate Files (University of Texas)
• UNT Mean Green Workshop Files (University of North Texas)

Internet Research Links

We will begin this section with a few basic tips for doing Internet research, begging with the search terms to use.

General Search Term Tips :

• Use terms from the resolution or congress legislation. If you are researching policy debate terms from the year’s resolution are an obvious starting point. If you are a student congress person then use terms and phrases from the legislation you are researching.
• Start general, and then get more specific based on the research. You may start with a broad search, and then as results flow, you will get a better idea of what you are looking for. As this happens, use terms that reappear in useful articles.
• Look for cited works. If you are reading an article, and it references another author’s work, look up the cited work.
• Mine the citations. At the end of many articles the author will have footnotes or citations. These are often very similar research articles to the one you are reading and should be useful.
• Look for Authors. If you get more than article by the same author, Google their name and see what else you can find. Often time’s people will write several works on the same subject.

Research with Google – Google is generally considered the best search engine around. The search tips above directly apply for using Google. In addition, here’s a few other tips:

• Change the Date: After searching you can use the “more search tools” bar on the left to search for on the newest articles. You can limit returns to the last week, month, year etc.
• PDF to Weed Out Junk: Click on the advanced search button below the search box, then use the “file type” tool to limit search returns to only PDF documents. This will weed out potentially undesirable blogs and limit returns to largely academic works.
• Use Quotation Marks: If you know an exact phrase you are looking for, use quotation marks. If, for example, you type – military presence – without quotes the search will return documents that contain those two words anywhere on the page. But if you type “military presence” it will only return pages with those words together.

Research with Google News – If you are looking for the most recent information on a topic then Google News is for you.

• Know the Date: Google News generally limits returns to articles in the past 30 days. To search older articles you need to click “advanced news search” and then you need to click on the “archive search” button. You may need to adjust the achieve dates to keep returns relatively recent.

Research with Think Tanks – The link above directs you to University of Michigan listing of think tanks. Thinks tanks are collections of “experts” who write their opinions on various issues. Though some people question the objectivity of many Think Tanks, the evidence they produce can be quite useful in speech and debate.  The US Congress often quotes evidence and uses arguments developed in Think Tanks

• Use the Search Function: Almost all think tanks have search buttons. Use the search tool like you would on Google.
• Examine Issues/Areas of Interests: most think tanks cover a variety of issues. They will usually have an issues/areas of interest/areas of research link. Look for the category that aligns with research and browse their information.
• Look Through Publications: Another way think tanks organize information is under a “publications” link. Click on the link and look for publications matching your topic.

Military Topic Master Links – This is a link to more links. It is a compilation of websites that should contain useful information for this year’s policy debate topic.

List of Journals – Here is a list of International Relations and Critical Security journals. Excellent for policy debate, especially Kritiks

Judging Policy Debate

Judges are expected to carefully and fairly decide the outcomes of a debate. Any judge who cannot fairly decide a particular debate should notify a tournament director, competition coordinator, or other responsible person and remove herself from judging. Judges are never assigned to judge students from their own school.
Judges are ultimately responsible, however, for making sure that they will judge debates in a fair manner. There are two outcomes for a debate. The judge must decide the winning side of the debate. That is the team that argued successfully on the topic. If the proposition team proves its case, the judge should reward the proposition team. If the proposition team did not prove its case, the judge should declare the opposition team as the winner. There are no ties in debates. Neither can two teams win a debate or both teams lose a debate.
In addition to deciding the winning team in the debate, a judge must award individual points to each of the four debaters. Student are rated on a scale of 0-30 points, with “30” points awarded for a perfect performance. The judge should consider public speaking, argumentation, and teamwork skills in assigning individual speaker points. It is possible to give the same speaker points to more than one student.
After careful deliberation of the outcome of the debate, the judge will complete a ballot, a record of the debate, given to her by the tournament host. The judge will then announce the outcome of the debate to the participating teams. The judge will explain the reasons that a particular side has won the debate.

The judge will provide some constructive criticism to help debaters improve in future debates. The judge will the complete the written ballot, providing a detailed description of the reason(s) for the outcome, as well as listing any additional comments to help debaters improve their public speaking and debate skills.

Source: NJFL Tournament Manuel 2011