From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

University Parliamentary Debating

World University Debating Championship

Regional Championships

Australasia  · Europe John Smith Memorial Mace  · North America

National Championships

Australia  · Canada  · Ireland

National Organizations

APDA  · CUSID English-Speaking Union  · NPDA

Styles

Australasian  · British Parliamentary

Lists of debaters

Global  · Canadian

Clubs

Cambridge  · Glasgow  · Otago Oxford  · UBC  · Cork  · Western Ontario TCD Hist.  · TCD Phil.

The National Parliamentary Debate Association (NPDA) is one of the two national intercollegiate parliamentary debate organizations in the United States. The other is the American Parliamentary Debating Association (APDA). The NPDA is a relatively young organization, but it is now the largest college debate organization in the United States. Its membership is national, with participating schools on both coasts and throughout the country.

Contents 1 The Rules of NPDA Debate 2 The NPDA Championship Tournament 3 Relationship to Other Tournaments and Organizations 4 Communicating Between Tournaments 5 NPDA National Champions 6 External links

In tournaments sponsored or sanctioned by the NPDA, teams of two persons debate head-to-head. Tournaments issue a new topic each round, generally on issues such as politics, philosophy, and current affairs, and speeches begin after limited preparation time.

Any mature debate circuit will develop its own customs and practices. Some people argue that the NPDA rules are very laissez-faire, preferring to let the norms of what constitutes valid argumentation be subjects for the debate itself. Others believe that, in recent years, the NPDA has been hesitant to allow its participants to engage in controversial, avant gard or "nontraditional" debate practices at its national championship tournament.

Parliamentary debate, which is often shortened as "parli," is a debate format in which tournament officials assign a new topic every round. After the announcement of the topic, the two teams have a limited preparation time (usually 15 minutes) during which to write out their respective cases.

The second important rule is time limits. The standard time limits for an NPDA debate are:

• First Proposition Speaker: 7 minutes
• First Opposition Speaker: 8 minutes
• Second Proposition Speaker: 8 minutes
• Second Opposition Speaker: 8 minutes
• Opposition Rebuttal: 4 minutes
• Proposition Rebuttal: 5 minutes

There are tournaments, however, at which these are modified, generally to a 7-7-7-7-5-5 format. The Claremont Colleges tournament, for instance, uses this 7-5 format. During constructive speeches, debaters may introduce new arguments and the speaker's opponents may rise to ask questions of the speaker. Constructive speakers can accept or reject any given question. Rebuttals are exclusively for summarizing the arguments that were made during constructives.

Over the past few years many coaches and competitors have refered to the offical title of speeches with different names. These are unofficial yet very popular with many judges:

• Prime Minister Constructive
• Leader of Opposition Constructive
• Member of Government Constructive
• Member of Opposition Constructive
• Leader of Opposition Rebuttal
• Prime Minister Rebuttal

The third rule of importance is the ban on quoted evidence. Literally, this simply means that the debaters may not bring in printed, published evidence and consult it during the round. It is expected that debaters will use their own preexisting knowledge and research conducted prior to the start of the actual round to back their arguments with reasoning and empirical data.

Once they enter the debating chambers, parliamentary debaters are prohibited from using published materials to supplement their arguments. This places parli in stark contrast to the other common intercollegiate debate format: policy debate. Policy debaters rely heavily on quoted evidence. Though thousands of words have been written about the differences between the two in practice, that is the only meaningful structural difference between them.

The NPDA runs one debate tournament each year: the NPDA Championship Tournament, held in late March or early April at rotating host sites. While the inaugural tournament in 1994 only hosted around 40 teams, the 2004 Championship Tournament was the largest debate tournament in world history with over 300 teams in the field from over a half-dozen nations. The tournament also features an exhibition debate between a team of Irish debaters and a team of debaters selected by the NPDA; ironically, the US audience consistently votes for the Irish team.

This tournament's practices are generally modeled by smaller invitational tournaments, which provide the bulk of year-long competition. NPDA sanctions many of these tournaments, and the school that does the best at sanctioned invitationals over the course of the year is awarded a year-long sweepstakes championship.

There are usually several NPDA-sanctioned invitational tournaments throughout the country to choose from on almost every weekend of the academic year. The largest of these tournaments include the Sunset Cliffs Classic held in February at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California, the season-opening Top of the Rockies tournament at the University of Wyoming in September, the Al Johnson Invitational at the Colorado College in October, and the Hatfield Debates at Willamette University in February.

Almost from its inception, the NPDA community has taken advantage of the Internet to continue debates (and to debate about debates) between tournaments and in the off-season. For years, this took place via the official electronic mailing list, much to the chagrin of those who saw that resource as best used for official communication such as posting tournament invitations and results.

Today, much of the online debate (especially between competitors) in the NPDA community takes place via the online forum Net-Benefits.net, founded by University of Southern California then-undergraduate Jed Link. The name "Net-Benefits" is a pun, referring to the debate paradigm by which the debate judge weighs the net benefits of two competing policies. The site is now an electronic hub for discourse and information on parliamentary debate.

Every year since 1994, the organization has held a national championship tournament. Winning teams include:

• 2007: Tim Kamermeyer and Griffith Vertican (Point Loma Nazarene University)
• 2006: Josh Anderson and Rachel Safran (University of Puget Sound)
• 2005: Paul Bingham & Meredith Price (Lewis & Clark College)
• 2004: Ian Samuel & Marie Tenny (Truman State University)
• 2003: Michael Owens & Joshua Wilkerson (University of Wyoming)
• 2002: Ben Garcia & Chris Richter (University of Alaska Anchorage)
• 2001: Danny Barak & Will Trachman (University of California, Berkeley)
• 2000: Ryan Kennedy & Jacob Stutzman (Truman State University)
• 1999: Geof Brodak & Bill Herman (Colorado State University)
• 1998: Heath Curtis & Rebekah Gilbert (Concordia University, Seward)
• 1997: Dan Nelson & Marcus Paroske (Regis University)
• 1996: Ryan Levy & Scott Ruthfield (Rice University)
• 1995: Meredith Marine & Neal Sample (University of Wyoming)
• 1994: Marcus Paroske & Tammy Schultz (Regis University)

• National Parliamentary Debate Association - homepage of the organization
• National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence - view current and old NPTE rankings
• Net-Benefits.net - online community for colleigiate parliamentary debate.