Theory Guide

By Lulu Cho

With the Tournament of Champions less than a week away and a judge pool comprising nearly 45% tech judges, getting comfortable with theory can be a major strategic advantage. This article will cover the structure of a theory shell, the most common types you'll encounter, and how to respond effectively.

For all examples in this article, we'll be using the resolution: "The U.S. Federal Government should substantially increase its investment in renewable energy." as a reference point.!

1. Structure

A theory shell is made up of five main parts: an Interpretation, Violation, Standards, Voters, and Underview. These words might sound like odd jargon, but at their core, they are no different from the regular arguments debaters commonly use. Let's walk through each one:

1. Interpretation

An interpretation functions the same as a uniqueness in the way that it discusses how the current status quo is functioning. It is essentially a rule you are proposing for how the round should be conducted and sets a standard you believe both teams should be held to. 

Do not think that an interpretation has strict criteria; it really does not. There are an infinite amount of interpretations that are all equal in function and importance. Just one example could be “Interpretation: the affirmative must specify what branch of the U.S. government will be executing the plan.”

1. Violation

The violation functions the same as a link, it is where you explain how the other team has broken your interpretation. You're showing exactly how the opposing team's actions link, or violate, the rule you've proposed. Despite violations usually being simple one liners, it is crucial that they are stated because if the other team does not violate your interpretation, none of your shell matters.

1. Standards

Standards act as the internal link to your voters. They explain why the rule you've proposed matters. These arguments are essentially, what values or principles of “good debate” your interpretation upholds, and the other team's behavior undermines.

Common standards include:

i. Ground: How your interpretation ensures both teams have access to both good quantity and quality of arguments you can make. Good ground means neither team is left without good things to say.

ii. Predictability: How your interpretation keeps the round within predictable bounds because during 20 minutes of prep, being able to anticipate what the other team might run allows you to better respond to arguments and strengthen your case.

iii. Limits: How your interpretation sets a “limit” or cap on what arguments can be run. This is crucial because without limits, debaters could argue virtually anything which makes rounds terminally unfair.

1. Voters

That leads us to the voters! Voters function like impacts in the way that they tell the judge what the other team’s actions are actually doing. There are many possible voters, but four you'll almost always want to include are:

i. Fairness: is important because debate only works if both teams have an equal opportunity to win. If that is not the case then no one would join debate!

iii. Education: is the reason most debaters participate in the activity. And even for those who don't, education is the only thing that everyone takes away from a round. It's the most lasting impact of any debate, which makes it an extremely important voter.

1. Underview

These are the framing arguments in a debate; they tell the judge how to actually evaluate the shell in itself and in relation to the rest of the debate. There are a few main arguments this is done through:

i. A priori: means that the judge should evaluate the theory shell before anything else in the round. Generally, the argument for this is that you must first know the rules of debate before you engage in it.

ii. Drop the debater: tells the judge what to actually do with the theory shell: vote against the debater who committed the violation. This may seem harsh, but dropping the debater is an argument that is extremely important to read if you want to win the theory shell. The argument is to drop the debater because it is key to deterring future abuse.

iii. Competing Interps > Reasonability: Under competing interps, the judge compares the two sides' interpretations and votes for whichever one has been proven to be “better” for debate. Under reasonability, the judge asks if the targeted team's behavior/interp crosses a threshold of abuse. The warrant for this argument is that reasonability leads to judge intervention.

iiii. No RVIS: RVIs mean that offense on theory is bidirectional or in other words, the judge can drop the team that ran the shell if they lose it. The argument people read with this is that the other team should not read an RVI because it leads to a “chilling effect,” meaning people will stop running theory on actual abuse.

2. Types of Theory

There are countless theory shells a debater can run, but the most commonly seen in parliamentary debate are Topicality, Extratopicality, Effects, Specificity/Spec, and Frivolous/Friv theory. Here's a breakdown of each.

1. Topicality

Before we get into this, it’s important to note that it is impossible for the negation side to be non-topical or extratopical. This is because the negation's job is to negate the affirmative, they are not tied to the resolution in any way, making it so topicality only ever applies to the affirmative.

Topicality argues that the affirmative's interpretation of the resolution is incorrect, making their case non-topical. For example, say the affirmative reads a plantext saying: "The U.S. Federal Government will invest $10 million in solar energy,” however, in the 20 minutes of prep, you and your partner unfortunately spent a majority of the time writing about wind energy. In this scenario, it would be strategic to present a theory shell claiming that renewable energy must be wind energy.

Your interpretation might look like: "The affirmative must define renewable energy as wind energy." From there, you'd state the violation, provide standards explaining why wind energy is the correct definition as well as better, and extend your voters.

1. Extratopicality

Extratopicality means the affirmative is defending the resolution and something beyond it. If their plantext is "The U.S. Federal Government will invest $10 million in energy.” Because they’re doing more than just renewable, they’ve gone beyond what the resolution requires.

Your interpretation would be similar to earlier, but maybe a word or two stressing the presence of only a singular definition, such as: "The affirmative must define renewable energy as solely wind energy." The shell structure that follows is the same as earlier.

1. Effects

Effects topicality (Effects T) is most common in “policy” rounds where the affirmative is passing some kind of plan. The argument here is that the affirmative only achieves the resolution as an effect of something else, rather than directly.

For instance, if the affirmative's plantext says "The U.S. Federal Government will appoint xyz to the EPA, who will then increase investment in renewable energy," the investment is not happening as the direct action of the plan, making it good grounds to run this T on. An interpretation could be “The affirmative must directly execute the plan.”

1. Spec (Specificity)

Spec shells argue that the opposing team underspecified something, or overspecified. 

i. Under Spec: says the affirmative must specify more, one example could be "The affirmative must verbally specify an actor in their plantext,” which is called “Actor spec” because it’s telling them to specify who is taking the action. Another example would be specifying the amount of money: “Interpretation: The affirmative must specify the amount of money they increase investment by.”

ii. Over Spec: says the affirmative was too detailed. This could be run in an instance where a team proposes an extremely niche plantext, such as “The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement in the U.S. federal government will invest 10,284,060.28 euros into the company Pavegen, who generates electricity through human footsteps.” The interpretation would sound like “The affirmative must only specify their plan to the extent of the resolution”

1. Frivolous Theory (Friv)

There is no real bright line for what counts as frivolous theory, but my wonderful coach, Brenna Seiersen, puts it well: "The bright line for friv theory is theory that can be read in every round and derives the violation from an action that is not pertinent to the speech."

Examples include hydration theory (“Interpretation: Debaters must drink water before the PMC") or shoe theory ("Interpretation: Debaters may not wear shoes during round"). These arguments often rely on flimsier logic and can be a little on the sillier side, but you still need to respond to them. Ignoring a theory shell, even a frivolous one can be game over for your round, you have to treat it with the same structural response you'd give any other shell.

3. Responding to Theory

No matter what kind of theory shell you're facing, your response should include five components: we meet / impossible to meet, counter interpretation, how you meet the counter interpretation, counter standards or offense on their standards, and some work on voters.

1. We Meet / Impossible to Meet

This is a simple few sentences just saying that your opponents’ interpretation is, as the name states, either already met or impossible to meet.

We meet example: Let’s say you're affirmative and your plantext was "The U.S. Federal Government should increase investment in solar energy by 20%," and the negation’s interpretation is "The affirmative must specify the amount of how much money they are increasing investment by." You could respond by saying "We meet this interpretation because they never require us to specify a dollar amount. We've specified a 20% increase of the current budget already.”

For an “impossible to meet” example, if their interpretation was “The affirmative must pass or send texts of any potential plantexts, ROBs (if you don’t know what that is, check out Kevin Chen’s article!), definitions, etc. if none are applicable then they must verbally tell us 5 minutes into preparation time,” then you could say “This is impossible to meet because 1. It is against rules to converse with other teams during prep 2. Anything outside of speech time is unverifiable

1. Counter Interpretation (CI)

A counter interpretation is the alternative rule you're proposing. It should be something you clearly meet and does not skew you out of the round at all.

Example: If their interpretation is "The affirmative must specify the dollar amount of their investment," your CI could simply be: "The affirmative does not need to specify a dollar amount, so long as they specify the scope or scale of investment in measurable terms."

1. We Meet the Counter-interpretation

Simply quickly explain how your own advocacy meets your counter-interpretation.

1. Counter Standards / Offense on Their Standards

The original theory shell your opponents run will have standards. You could propose new standards that your CI better uphold, turn their standards by arguing your CI actually serves them better than theirs do, or both!

It is important to try to respond to all of their standards; however, do not spend too much time on a theory shell in the MG because you never know if the negation side is actually going to go for it in the block. The rule of thumb is typically 1-1:30 minutes.

Example: Using the interp and counter-interp from section 3b above, if one of their standards is ground, you could argue: "Our counter interpretation provides better ground because by not requiring a specific dollar amount, the affirmative can engage a broader range of arguments about investment strategy.”

1. Voters

For fairness and education, you can generally cross-apply their voters onto yours. If your CI upholds fairness and education better than theirs, say so directly.

1. Underview  

i. A priori: Unfortunately, this argument is basically a truism. The best thing you can do is to just moot their theory shell so even if the judge evaluates it, it does not hurt you in any way.

ii. Drop the debater: Again, winning the shell is your easiest way out, but you can respond by arguing that dropping the debater is disproportionate to the violation, i.e. the violation was way too minor for the judge to drop the debater as a whole. If anything, they should just drop the argument.

iii. Competing Interps > Reasonability: The argument against this is just the judge should gutcheck if the team did anything wrong and even if it is slightly interventionist, it’s better for the judge to logic it our rather than have a team dropped for an invalid reason.

iiii. No RVIS: The response here is to argue that there should be RVIs because whether they can be run or not shouldn’t matter if the team running the shell is actually proposing a logical, legitimate argument.

Debate During Summer!

Summer is Off-Season for Debate, but it Doesn’t Have to Be: Here Are the Best Ways to Improve at Debate Over the Summer

The debate season is over, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop debating. Summer, and the abundance of free time that it brings, is the perfect opportunity to improve your skills and gain a leg up on the competition ahead of the upcoming season! Here are the six best ways to do so.

1. Attend a camp

Nothing helps you improve at parli faster than a camp. First, the volume of learning that you get from attending a full-day camp is incredible; just a single day of instruction at a camp gives you roughly the same amount of time to learn as a month of practice (assuming two, hour-long sessions per week). Second, debate camps draw some of the best and most experienced former debaters and coaches, all of whom bring unique perspectives and advice. From them, you are able to learn new skills and get feedback to help you improve in ways you would not be able to during the school year. Finally, especially since tournaments aren’t held during the summer, camps provide a great space to be able to debate (in full, competitive yet friendly rounds) against others of a similar skill level, ensuring that you won’t need any adjustment time when you enter your first tournament of the upcoming season. When I went to camp this past summer, I took advantage of office hours with my lab leaders to ask questions about frameworks and plans, since those were two aspects of debate that I was never formally taught, and was able to use their answers to experiment with different frameworks and plans during the camp’s rounds. While many local leagues run their own camps, one great option for this is the NYPDL’s summer camp, taught by coaches and former NYPDL debaters. Held from August 9-11, it is free, online, and includes a mini tournament on its last day.

2. Do practice rounds

The best way to get better at parli is to debate as much as possible. While targeted drills can help with any aspects of debate you feel particularly challenged in, nothing compares, in terms of raising your overall level of debating, to actually doing rounds. Not only do these allow you to practice every part of a debate, but they also build partner cohesion and give you experience debating a variety of topics (even if exact motions aren’t reused year-to-year, you’ll likely find yourself having similar debates to ones you’ve already had once you do enough practice rounds). So, if you have an evening or two free this summer, consider setting up a practice round with some of your friends!

3. Redo your old speeches

Redoing old speeches is another excellent way to improve. Take an old flow from a round you thought that you could have done better in, and choose a speech to redo. Read over the flow up until that point, then try to give your speech. If you still think your speech could be improved, try again. Once you’re happy with the speech’s quality, move onto a new speech, either from that same round or a different one. If you have a recording of the round, start by watching it through the speech you're redoing, then give your speech and compare. By repeatedly thinking about what flaws appear in your speeches and how to prevent them, you’ll begin to be able to do so in real time, eliminating errors and improving the quality of your debating.

4. Practice the skills you want to improve on

If you’ve noticed that a certain skill is tricky for you, summer, when you can follow whatever practice schedule you want, is the perfect time to focus on improving in that area. Spend your time doing drills that focus specifically on that area, and you should begin to see improvement. For example, if writing cases has been an issue for you, choose a random motion and side, give yourself fifteen/twenty minutes, and write a case. Repeat that process until you feel comfortable, then give yourself twelve, then ten, then seven minutes, etc. By the time you go back to a tournament, where you can prepare with a partner and the full allotted time, writing a case will feel easy.

5. Look through debate resources

In addition to being a great time to practice, summer is also the perfect time to learn. If there were any concepts that you or your team skipped or haven't gotten to yet, or anything from the year that you want to take a closer look at, summer is an excellent time to do so. In particular, many teams teach the basics of debate, but not some of the background knowledge that’s useful in different types of rounds. Reading through slideshows covering the basics of economics, international relations, politics, ethics, and more can be just as helpful in improving your debating as learning more about any debate skills; having more knowledge than your opponent in these areas can win you dozens of rounds throughout the year, as you’ll be able to prep a better case and come up with better refutations. The NPDL and NYPDL each have great collections of free resources to help you through this process.

6. Read the news

By the time the next debate season starts, a lot will have transpired with regards to current events. Tournament directors are always looking for content to inspire their motions, and what’s happened over the summer will likely show up in a decent amount of your rounds towards the start of the year. Making sure you read the news to keep yourself updated with current events (particularly US politics and international relations) will give you a large advantage in your first few tournaments. To ensure you don’t miss any significant events, I would recommend subscribing yourself to a current events newsletter, reading or listening to weekly news roundups, or scanning the headlines of your favorite newspaper each morning for any important news.

If you’re interested in learning more about the NYPDL’s summer camp, you can find that information here, and sign up for the camp here.

A guest post by

Ethan Bordoff

Ethan Bordoff is a student at Hunter College High School in NYC where he is the founder and captain of the parli team, incoming Executive Director of the NYPDL Board, and a National Parliamentary Debate League Correspondent.

Run for Board: President's Letter

By Kyle Hietala, NPDL President
April 4, 2025

Our League is guided by a volunteer Board of Directors—individuals who contribute their time, expertise, and energy to promote accessible, educational, and impactful parliamentary debate for students nationwide. Each year, our member schools and their representatives elect our board to shape the direction of the League. If you’re passionate about debate, interested in education, and eager to guide a growing national organization, I hope you’ll consider running—both for what you will gain and for what you will give.

Personal Growth Through Leadership

For me, serving on our board has been a challenging and meaningful leadership experience that has given me new friends and a greater appreciation for the diversity of our community. It takes collaboration, initiative, and vision to be effective at organizational planning, policy development, strategic outreach, and long-term decision-making. Board members contribute to a wide range of projects—from developing tournament infrastructure and digital resources, to improving equity protocols and strengthening partnerships with schools across the country. These efforts help board members develop skills in project management, nonprofit governance, and team leadership—which translate directly to both academic and professional contexts.

Meaningful Impact on Others

While personal development is a meaningful benefit, the most compelling reason for most folks who serve on the NPDL Board is the impact you can make on others. I’m unapologetically convinced that parli isn’t just a better form of debate – but the best type of competitive debate, no matter which style(s) of parli one does. Motions (as opposed to resolutions) incentivize real-world research skills and promote broad, balanced knowledge acquisition. Partnerships halve the ratio of required judges for tournaments and facilitate more collaboration and teamwork. Longer speech times enable in-depth development of argumentation.

Serving on the Board gives you the leverage to promote a form of debate that is uniquely effective at helping students develop confidence, critical thinking, civic awareness, and the ability to engage in respectful dialogue. Board members make decisions that shape the competitive season, support students and coaches, and remove barriers that have historically limited participation. Whether you're working to introduce new schools to the activity, improve the quality of tournaments, or develop mentorship initiatives, your efforts as a board member directly impact hundreds (if not thousands) of students each year. 

Who Should Run?

One of my favorite poets, William Butler Yeats, wrote that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”  The last two years would’ve pleased W.B., I think, as our board has been made up of reasonable folks who’ve usually sought to compromise with each other and reach consensus. Not all of our decisions have been unanimous, but we’ve shared a mutual respect for each other and a sense of humility. We chide each other sometimes and thank each other often, as we appreciate working together and see a shared purpose to our work.

We welcome any adult who believes in debate and subscribes to the ‘we before me’ vision of leadership. You need not be a former competitor or coach to serve – educators, alumni, and citizen advocates are all welcome and encouraged to run. Whether you bring a decade of coaching experience or a fresh outside perspective, what matters most is a commitment to serving students and a willingness to work with others. You don’t need to have all the answers—but you should be ready to ask honest questions, work collaboratively, and help move the organization forward.

The Opportunity Ahead

When I was elected President two years ago, the NPDL had a reputation as a mercurial organization rife with conflicts – I was cautioned of scathing open letters, contentious community meetings, and tournaments halted by mass protests. Now, we tend to look back on the days when rules were ‘written in blood’ as part of an increasingly distant past, and look more toward an aspirational, inclusive future. 

We have a lot of work left to do, and I think our next board has a crucial opportunity to answer big questions about the mission, vision, and values of our organization. In seeking a 3rd term as President, my focus would be on cultural and organizational transformation. My priorities would include substantially streamlining rules, policies, and procedures that tend to waste our time and energy. I’d strive to build fundraising capacity, and invest more resources in tournament growth and quality improvements, hire contract-based staff to accelerate resource production, and develop regional and national partnerships to promote student participation. I think it’s time for the NPDL to become a truly reputable, national organization with a clear mission and vision. 

Of course, you might disagree with that vision, in which case my advice to you would be exactly the same: run for board, perhaps by running against me. Our member schools, coaches, and students deserve to have many excellent, qualified candidates to choose from, and I sincerely hope you’ll consider serving. If you have any questions about serving, you can learn more here.

How To Run

If you’re interested in serving on the Board, please email your Statement of Interest to npdl.elections@gmail.com by this Saturday, April 5, 11:59PM (PDT).  The Statement of Interest must list at least one, but no more than three Board positions you are interested in. The five available positions are President, Secretary, Treasurer, TOC Director, and Outreach Director. A Statement of Interest does not indicate that you are definitely running - it just means that you're potentially interested and will make a final decision about whether to run and what position to run for after you see who else is interested. A Statement of Interest is, however, a required step for anyone who wants to eventually become a Board candidate.

BOARD MEMBER DUTIES

Duties of all Board members

• attend monthly Board meetings 

• familiarize themselves with league rules)

President
↖one Board seat, elected through Instant Runoff Voting

• chair monthly Board meetings

• communicate with tournament directors

• maintain the tournament calendar

Secretary
↖one Board seat, elected through Instant Runoff Voting

• take minutes at member and Board meetings

• maintain the member roster

• keep the bylaws up to date

• send updates to the league membership

Treasurer
↖one Board seat, elected through Instant Runoff Voting

• manage league finances

• report on the finances to the membership

TOC Director
↖one Board seat, elected through Instant Runoff Voting

• organize the NPDL Tournament of Champions

Outreach Directors
↖three Board seats, elected through Single Transferable Vote

• maintain NPDL rankings, resolutions database, and round recordings database

• develop Parli debate curriculum

• oversee public relations

Taking on Tech Debate - Conquering the Kritik!

In this opinion article, NDPL Correspondent Kevin Chen shares insights on Kritiks in parli (including how to beat them!)

With the culminating Tournament of Champions just one week away and a judge pool comprising nearly 30% tech judges, it is more important than ever for debaters to be familiar with Kritiks. The seemingly contrived philosophical arguments and complex language used in Ks make them a daunting argument for most debaters to encounter. This article aims to demystify the strategy and present it as effectively a complicated disadvantage and counterplan.

Structure

You’ll usually see Kritiks run in a four-segment structure: Framework, Links, Impacts, and the Alternative. Let’s go through these one by one.

A: Framework

The framework of a K could be seen as a much broader, prescriptive uniqueness argument that interrogates a structural assumption of the opposition team. Usually, this section is headed by a Role of the Ballot (ROTB), a fancy phrase that in effect tells the judge what their ballot should be used for. For example, the implicit ROTB of standard case debate is to determine if the plan is good or bad. A K ROTB, on the other hand, could conceivably be anything, from voting on the team that best deconstructs a type of rhetoric to endorsing the best paradigm for policymaking.

The rest of the framework establishes an alternative way of engaging with the debate space, critiquing numerous structural assumptions in traditional argumentation and justifying the ROTB. A classic framework point that is embedded in almost all Ks is that fiat is illusory and/or bad. It points out that fiat, or the power of the Aff to will the plan into existence when debating, does not actually produce the same action in the real world and instead causes Negative impacts like false confidence in climate policy. Another popular framework argument is serial policy failure (SPF), which is seen commonly in Ks arguing against policy or the state. SPF makes a root cause claim for the inherent ineffectiveness of policy actions, basically saying that any policy from the Aff will fail when attempting reform without structural change.

At the end of the framework sheet, many teams will include a thesis, which explains the general ideological argument of the K. It’s probably going to be important to note this down and ask questions, especially if it’s based off of a specific philosopher’s work.

B: Links

Links in a K function similarly to links in a disadvantage in that it argues that the Aff does something that leads to undesirable impacts. However, instead of arguing that the Aff directly causes a tangible impact (eg. the plan causes inflation), the link here establishes how an action or assumption of the Affirmative either sustains or perpetuates the system the K is criticizing. For example, a common link seen in a Capitalism K describes how the Aff’s reliance on state policy as a means of change reifies the exploitative system of capitalism by masking it with mild reform. Other links can be more specific to the plan itself and what it does; in the case of a plan advocating for US foreign direct investment in third-world countries, the link could be that FDI is a method for the US to debt-trap poorer countries to impose its imperialism.

More often than not, Ks that don’t just critique methodology will include epistemological (def. relating to the theory or production of knowledge) links that challenge how the Aff frames knowledge and reality. In a Securitization K (which argues that the state justifies violence by magnifying threats), for example, a generic link is that the Aff constructs uniqueness claims to establish a brink, which justifies securitization and the necessity of the plan. Another type of epistemological link focuses on discourse, critiquing the Aff’s rhetoric as inherently problematic.

C: Impacts

The impacts of a K are comparable to regular impacts, describing how the Aff perpetuating the critiqued system will lead to a net harm in society. Impact scenarios are especially tricky because they very often involve many try or die arguments, introducing big stick structural impacts that outweigh any proximal impact of the Aff. Some common impacts on a Capitalism K you’ll see are no value to life, which basically argues that all people are reduced to productive machines, and ecological destruction, which says that the profit-driven nature of capitalism will lead to infinite resource exploitation and exacerbated climate change. Many other common impacts address pre-fiat issues, such as rhetoric, which the team will argue is more pressing than any fiat-world issue. If not responded to well, any marginal risk of offense in a K impact up-layers Aff impacts; so even if you win your case-level impacts, you lose the round.

D: Alternative

Then comes the alternative of the K. You can think of this section as a counterplan, although its advocacy may look very different from a normal policy action. These actions could happen either in the post-fiat world, meaning in the same realm as usual resolutional debate, or in the pre-fiat world, which is the actual world we live in.

Many post-fiat alternatives revolve around an armed revolution or a protracted people's war, as seen in Ks opposing the state. These will use fiat to begin an armed struggle against the oppressive system the K is critiquing, with solvency claims being substantiated with historical precedent. These are tricky in the sense that they often include pre-fiat solvency as well, for example arguing that even talking about the efficacy of an armed revolution is good for critical education in the debate space, regardless of if the alternative produces good in fiat world.

Pre-fiat alternatives fall into two general categories: reject or endorse. These tend to be worded very differently from counterplans, an example being “Vote Negative to reject securitization” or “Vote Negative to endorse an absolute commitment to class struggle.” Both of these attempt to reframe the system or view the round through an alternative lens. The solvency of these arguments tend to revolve around educating the debaters or judges in the round about shifting to a better mindset.

Responses

Responding to Kritiks is no different than responding to any other argument. The single most important thing to keep in mind when encountering Ks is to calm down and not get overwhelmed by the fast speaking or big words. Think back to your flowing drills—note down two or three important words per point, use shorthand to hasten your writing, think of responses on your feet. If needed, you could always ask your partner to flow for you while you think of rebuttals or vice versa.

A: Framework

K frameworks are often packed with tricks and hidden arguments that could outframe you if you’re not careful in your responses, fiat bad and SPF being two common examples. To answer the framework, you should first offer a counter-role of the ballot (CROTB). These could look like “The role of the ballot is to evaluate the desirability of the plan,” along with reasons why this is preferable to the K ROTB. You then justify this CROTB through responses to other K framework points, especially the ones that frame policy as inherently bad as you’re defending policy debate. An easy overview-level response that you can make is that the state is inevitably going to be the locus of power, so engaging in debate to gain policy education is the only way to achieve any impact in the real world, hence your CROTB.

The other framework-level responses could be logically made as any other responses in parli. For example, you could say that fiat is important because it allows us to debate about the impacts of a possible government policy or that state reform is still possible as seen through the 13th Amendment which outlawed slavery. The best way to come up with these responses is by thinking about why the systems the K is critiquing exist—why does the Aff have fiat power, why do we do policy debate, etc. Pondering these questions can help with your intuition in responding to Ks.

B: Links

Responses to links and impacts, work functionally the exact same way as normal case debate does. For example, a no-link argument against the Securitization K could be that your uniqueness isn’t constructed, it’s accurate and substantiated. An especially prevalent type of link-level argument, though, is the relink. Many Ks have an alternative or some sort of rhetoric that perpetuates the same bad system that they’re critiquing, such as if the Neg critiques the pursuance of desire but still desires the ballot. If you can find one of these instances, it’s easy to defend that a team relinking into their own K is worse than you linking in, perhaps because it corrupts their philosophical movement from within.

C: Impacts

Something to be very wary of on K impacts is try-or-die claims. As mentioned before, the K often has extinction impacts, which when weighed well could win against any Aff impact by pure strength of link. Again, these impacts can be treated the same as any case impact, so don’t get scared by the big claims!

D: Alternative

The alternative is often the weakest link of a K, so be sure to recognize what their advocacy is actually doing. The same way you would refute a plan or counterplan, you need to take out their solvency and read disadvantages on their action. Many post-fiat alternatives revolve around some sort of protracted people’s war, so the obvious response is that the state is going to crush your movement and lead to mass death. This acts both as a solvency takeout and a turn. Since this is a common scenario in K rounds, it’s good to memorize historical warrants for revolutions not working. In a pre-fiat alternative, the solvency is the easiest to refute. Since they are usually worded in the reject or endorse format mentioned above, they often have incredibly marginal impacts constrained to your specific debate round, which is probably not worth sacrificing topical case debate for.

Another good argument that should nearly always be read is a permutation. A perm is a test of competition for any Negation advocacy, in other words a response arguing that both the Aff and the Neg can exist in the same world. If this perm wins, it means that the Neg isn’t fulfilling their burden of negating the Aff, winning you the alternative no matter if you win the K or not. For example, you could argue that raising the federal minimum wage and endorsing a protracted people’s war aren’t mutually exclusive. Almost all alternatives will also include perm spikes, though, arguing why their advocacy is competitive. These are important to respond to, or else the K team can extend their spikes and kill your perm. Recall that winning the perm does not necessarily win you the round, it just means the K doesn’t get unique solvency, so you can still lose by linking into the K impacts.

Case

Don’t forget to win your own case. Your opponents may spend about a minute in their speech dumping cross-applied turns on your case, which tend to be easy to refute if you’re winning the K. You never want to lose on presumption if the K is a wash, so extend, extend, extend!

A good acronym to keep track of K responses is FPOSTAL, which stands for: framework, permutation, offense, solvency, theory, alternative, and links.

Kevin Chen is a current parliamentary debater, junior at the Nueva School, and National Parliamentary Debate League Correspondent.

NPDL Spring Winners and Building Parli Teams!

Congratulations to Nueva’s Ritika Savla & Eliya Wee for winning NPDL Spring in the Open Division, on a 3-2 decision on the resolution, “When in conflict, governments should prioritize mitigating existential risks (i.e. nuclear war, climate change) over reducing suffering in humans and animals.” Menlo-Atherton HS (Allegra Hoddie & Gustav Singel) were runners-up.

Congratulations as well to Princeton High Schools’s Hu & Wang for winning the March Columbia University Parli Invitational on a 4-0 decision!

-Nate Berls, NPDL Curriculum Director

Image courtesy of Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School

How I Built a Thriving Parli Team From Scratch—And How You Can Too

Ethan Bordoff, junior at Hunter College High School, NPDL Correspondent

Three days and three rounds. That was the extent of my parliamentary debate experience when I entered my sophomore year as founder and head of my school’s parli team. I felt vastly unprepared, learning as I taught. Practice attendance was low, tournament attendance even lower, and almost nobody outside of our team even knew parli existed. This year, I did almost everything differently, and the changes we made have been a huge step in the right direction. I’ve also taken on a role as a member of the New York Parliamentary Debate League’s (NYPDL) Onboarding Committee, where I help students and coaches make the right choices for their teams. In this article, I’ll share the five most important pieces of advice I give to those looking to start or expand a parli team, the tips I wish I’d gotten before I started my team. While every team’s journey is unique, these tips are essential for building a strong foundation.

1. Advertise, Advertise, Advertise

I cannot stress this enough. Every high school has dozens of extracurriculars to join, and you are competing against them. Luckily, parli sells itself. It’s an academic extracurricular, it’s popular in college, and team members get to discuss almost every topic imaginable—including many less-than-serious ones—and there’s no required work outside of practices and tournaments. (That said, a major error is to characterize parli as a low-commitment, unserious extracurricular. I did that my first year, and though it got some people to come, by the end of the year I hadn’t seen many of them at practice for months.)

At the start of the year, before you hold any interest meetings, make sure that students have heard of parli and will attend: Hang posters advertising what parli has to offer, start an Instagram account and follow students at your school, spread the word through friends, have food at the meeting, ask your faculty advisor or a favorite teacher to advertise the team to their class (a teacher with six classes and thirty students per class can advertise to almost two hundred students in a single day). Even if nobody really knows what parli is beforehand, you can use this interest meeting to hook them. It’s crucial to do this as early as possible, since many students (myself included) are hesitant to join new extracurriculars later in the year.

Once the meeting has passed, keep advertising. Keep those posters up, share photos on Instagram of your team having fun at practice or tournaments, tell members to advertise parli to their friends, and make it explicitly clear that meetings will have donuts (this last one works much better than you might think). Hopefully, you should have a decent amount of returning members.

2. Utilize Free Resources

One of the reasons that I love parli so much is that despite the fact that it’s competitive, it has one of the nicest and most helpful communities that I’ve been a part of. Resources from leagues such as the NPDL or NYPDL are on the leagues’ websites, and they have slideshows covering a variety of lesson plans that you can use to guide your practices. I’ve personally used NPDL and NYPDL resources almost exclusively to teach my team, and they’ve saved countless hours in planning and ensured my team had access to high quality instructional material.

To gain experience before the year starts, opportunities like summer camps or mentorship programs are a great path to take. Camps give you the experience you need in a short time frame, and mentors can meet with you throughout the year to help address problems that arise with your team and give you advice. To get you started, the NYPDL runs a free, virtual, summer camp each year and has a free mentorship program open to all; you can find links to both on their website.

3. Make Practice Engaging

Make sure you know the material you’re presenting. You don’t have to be an expert on it, but for example, if you followed item two and are using outside slideshows, make sure you’ve read through them, can present them without reading from the slides, and are prepared to answer questions. From experience, team members immediately disengage when you’re trying to understand each slide as you present it. They can tell!

Next, make sure that lessons aren’t just lectures. Do drills after a slideshow and make sure to ask for examples as you go along. Since your team members know you might ask for their input or ask them to try skills themselves, they will be much more engaged. Collaborative drills (for example, creating refutations to a case together on the day that you cover how to respond to arguments) take the pressure off of individual students, allow you to guide your team members with hints, and encourage teamwork with students building off of each other.

However, ensure that you also give your team members ample chances to just debate. I hold practice four days a week and have found that alternating between practice rounds and lessons works well. Not only does this make practices fun, but it takes the lessons from abstract to useful by allowing students to implement what they learned. Having motions related to what you taught in the previous lesson (such as economics or politics) is a great way to encourage that. Practice rounds also help team members build up confidence to compete.

Lastly, one of my favorite parts about parli is that as far as academic extracurriculars go, it’s really fun. Use that to your advantage in meetings. Use pop culture motions as for drills, read funny contentions for your team to respond to or weigh against, let team members choose which motions they want to debate, or even add jokes into your slideshows. I find that team members stay the longest and are the most engaged when we’re still learning but not taking everything too seriously (just make sure that you can still get serious when you need to be). The last part of running your team to focus on is tournaments…

4. Compete as Soon and as Often as Possible

The best way to learn is to compete. Tournaments are fun, and tournament success is a great way to improve the legitimacy of parli within your school. (Make sure to share your accomplishments and maybe some fun photos through social media, emails, or your school’s announcements system, if it has one.)Many novices are reluctant to compete, especially early in the season. I find that it’s a combination of not thinking that they will do well, and tournaments being a hassle in terms of travel, judging, and time commitment.

If novices are worried about how they will perform at their first competition, look for tournaments with split novice and varsity divisions. This will ensure that your teams don’t have a bad experience against experienced debaters, and their rounds are as evenly matched. Most West Coast tournaments have these, and since it’s novice, even if you’re on the East Coast it's unlikely that your teams would run into advanced progressive arguments (Ks or Theory). However, some East Coast tournaments also have split divisions, usually those run by colleges (such as Brown or Columbia’s annual tournaments). However, if tournaments with only one division, such as those run by the NYPDL, work best, that shouldn’t be a dealbreaker—just make sure to remind them that these tournaments are harder, but are the best way to improve. Next, let your team members know why they should compete early on. This is their only novice year, so they should make the most of the easier opponents and path to elimination rounds, and early on in the year, all novices have the same amount of experience. The longer they wait to compete, the more they risk falling behind. Lastly, if you as a competitor have performed poorly at a tournament (especially your first one), letting your novices know that can be strangely relieving. They likely look up to you as a standard for a “good debater,” and the fact that you don’t always do well takes a lot of pressure off of them to succeed right away.

If tournaments are expensive or far away, see if you can get your school or the tournament organizers to waive the fees of those for whom these fees would be a barrier to entry, and try to organize carpools or groups to take public transportation together. Online tournaments can also be a great way to avoid these issues, as they’re often cheaper than in-person ones. Some are even free: the NYPDL runs free online tournaments monthly. If there is a parli organization in your area that runs shorter tournaments (such as the Connecticut Debate Association or Golden Gate Speech Association’s four-round tournaments), these can be great first tournaments for your novices, before they know that they’re willing to devote a whole weekend to parli. Additionally, trying to encourage your teams to all go to a specific tournament is a great strategy, since it makes the experience more social and fun. Having a team dinner or ice cream run after an in-person tournament helps create the lasting friendships that strong teams are built on. For online tournaments, try creating a group chat for competitors instead.

5. Be Patient And Celebrate Success

Even if you’re doing everything right, building a successful team takes time. There will be practices when nobody shows up, and tournaments where every team does badly. Celebrate your wins: it doesn’t matter if a school had eight teams break, you can be just as happy that your first team ever broke. Remember what your team looked like (if it existed) before you started running it, and think about how far you’ve come; your novices who made it to elimination rounds learned everything they know about parli from you. If you’re a junior or senior, consider thinking, later in the year, about who you might want to run the team once you graduate. Make sure that you find someone who you’re confident can continue what you started, and maybe even have them co-captain with you for a year to give them the necessary experience if you can.

Two years in, I still have days when I wait for half an hour only for nobody to show up to practice and weeks where only one team comes. But I also have days where nearly the whole team is present and weeks where I see almost every partnership. My team hasn’t won the TOC or swept states (yet!), but I’m happy with the progress that we’ve made. I hope, just maybe, in a few years, new captains will be aiming to reach the heights of the very best teams—perhaps even yours.

Ethan Bordoff is a junior at Hunter College High School in NYC, serves on Onboarding and Outreach Committee of the NYPDL Board, founder and captain of Hunter’s parli team, and National Parliamentary Debate League Correspondent.

Tournament Results And College Debate Interviews

Tournament Results

This weekend, Parli debaters competed at Stanford and Brown University tournaments. Congratulations to Dublin’s Harveer Saini and Suhani Gupta for winning the 39th Stanford invitational in the TOC Qualifying division.

Congratulations to Horace Mann’s Michelle Grinberg & Ian Allard-Neptune for winning the open division of the first annual Brown University Invitational. I had the pleasure of judging at the Brown tournament and it was a fantastic experience. A notable topic: THBT horizontal mergers should be heavily restricted. Certainly a brain-bender!

- Nate Berls, NPDL Curriculum Director

Photo by Caroline Kramer / The Dartmouth

As a High School Debater, Should You Compete in College?

Kevin Chen, junior at the Nueva School, NPDL Correspondent 

Although in most people’s minds “competitive debate” conjures up images of high school students giving podium speeches to their peers during club hours or forcing their parents to drive them to weekend tournaments at dawn, debate can be just as big a part of collegiate life as in high school. This rings especially true for parliamentary debate, as the often localized event is suddenly expanded to a truly national scale with more than 300 participating schools. APDA and NPDA (American and National Parliamentary Debate Association, respectively) make up the core of college parli, with several thousand active debaters. The NPDA is the larger of the two leagues, with stylistic features similar to high school NPDL debate.

I asked three college debaters their thoughts. Timothy Zhu is a third year at UC Berkeley and a coach for the Nueva debate team, Brenna Seiersen is a graduate student at UC Berkeley who coaches the Cal college parli team and Campolindo team, and Rohan Sachdev is a second year at University of Chicago who coaches for the Nueva school.

Tell me a bit about the type of debate you do.

Rohan: I do American Parliamentary Debate. It is similar to what you are used to; the main difference is the way that topics are decided. One [type] is motions: we are given a topic and assigned a side of that topic. The other is called cases debate: the team assigned to Gov gets the opportunity to decide on a topic, and they have a predefined PMC written ahead of time, whereas the other team has to spend the 15 minutes prepping.

Brenna: The [only stylistic] difference between college and high school debate is that NPDA allows team prep. The debates, especially at the university level, are quite technical. These debates are going to be very, very fast, with critical arguments and theory. Even when they talk about policy, they’re going to have interesting arguments. I also have insight into community college NPDA, which is stylistically different [from university]. In terms of style, it’s slower, with emphasis on presentation. You don’t really have kritiks or theory, since many of your judges are speech coaches. Also, it’s definitely a mandate to wear suits, unlike university parli.

For APDA, who arbitrates the fairness of cases, since the affirmation can propose anything?

Rohan: There's a sort of an inbuilt theory mechanism to deal with this. It's called tight calling. The thesis is that if the Opp team believes that the Gov case is too strong, they can do what's called a tight call, which says “this isn't fair, we should switch sides,” Then the Opp defends the Gov case and vice versa.

What was your favorite pre-prepared APDA case?

Rohan: My favorite case to debate is about the IRA. In Irish history, at the end of British colonization, there was a guerrilla force fighting against their occupation during the Irish Civil War. At the end of the Irish Civil War, the treaty enshrines that Ireland exists as a free state, excluding approximately six northern counties which were to remain under control of the United Kingdom. There was a part of the IRA that decided that they wanted to continue fighting against the treaty. The case talks about the Irish Catholic Church's reaction to that, because they chose to excommunicate those people who continue to fight. [The case] considers their motivations, their interests, etc.

How much time do you spend preparing for debate in the average week?

Tim: Well during break before [tournaments], we did a round a day, about two hours. But in a normal season, we’re not that diligent about practicing.

Brenna: I probably do around two practice rounds a week, and spend time outside of that writing files or doing prep drills. Sometimes during class if a lecture was really boring, I just take out my computer and start writing files.

How is the tournament experience? Is it any different from high school tournaments?

Tim: They’re almost all travel tournaments. A couple, like University of the Pacific, were local. But we’ve flown to McKendree, UT Tyler… I’ve gone to three tournaments my freshman spring, one more recently, and two more this semester.

Rohan: The least committed members of the team will go once a quarter. The most committed members of the team, which I would say I'm probably one of, will aim to go two or three times a month. In terms of how the competing experience is different, I'm doing a lot more traveling. I'm taking at least a two hour flight most weekends and getting up usually at about four or five a.m. on a Friday morning, competing through Friday, competing through Saturday, and then [getting on] a morning flight back.

How does the circuit differ from the high school level?

Brenna: I know that pre COVID the circuit was quite tight knit as people were close friends with people from other teams, but you also had huge rivalries. I would say that now, friendships are more rare. Teams are more hesitant to socialize with other teams, but the experience is generally positive. We don't have a lot of drama on the circuit, more like friendly acquaintances.

Rohan: I would say a large proportion of people do high school debate because they want to get into college. In college, there really is no similar motivation. There's some networking benefits, but if you're getting up at 4 a.m. on a Friday morning to go to a tournament, odds are you care about debate more than checking a box, so everyone cares a lot more about debate at the college level.

How has debating in college shaped your social life?

Tim: The NPDA circuit is fairly small, so you see the same people very consistently, and you hit the same people at tournaments. If you're on the circuit for a while, you get a lot of opportunities to meet people from other schools. Everyone is so nice on the NPDA circuit nowadays.

Brenna: When I was in community college, I would say that my main friend group was my debate team. We had a really dedicated team room on the [Diablo Valley College] campus, so it was normal for most people on the team to always be there in between every class. Now that I'm at Berkeley, thankfully my social circle isn't just the debate team, but I'm still super close to my team. Because I mean we're traveling together quite often and we're cooped up in little hotel rooms or Airbnb's together.

Rohan: Some people come with predefined cases that they want to talk about, so some people know a lot about African IR, some people know a lot about random TV shows, etc. It really does create a diverse community of people that know a lot of random things and engage with their interests in good faith. We get very close when we're competing because we're having new experiences [when we’re] traveling.

Would you recommend doing college debate for a current high school debater?

Tim: Yeah. Debate for me has a massive skill ceiling, and the amount of knowledge you can gain is incredible. I would probably not do NPDA if you don’t care about winning. I feel like to participate in this competitive event, you need to know things to avoid losing instantly to something like one-off spectral politics. If you want to win, there’s a lot of ways you can improve—get faster, memorize positions to set yourself apart from other people on the circuit.

Brenna: Yes, absolutely. I think that people who have a background in high school debate often find a lot of success in college debate as well.

Rohan: I think it depends. There's a moment in your life where you feel like you're done with debate, and the returns start to diminish. The type of person who would like APDA is someone who has a very specific interest and wants to continue learning in a way that debate provides. The question is really: Does debate provide you with more value than whatever else you could be doing? The average person could learn a lot from APDA, but it’s up to the individual to decide if it’s worth their time.

Kevin Chen is a current parliamentary debater, junior at the Nueva School, and National Parliamentary Debate League Correspondent.

A guest post by

Kevin Chen