by Patrick McDonald | Apr 8, 2021 | Negative, Team Policy
“I voted for your opponents because lives are important.” Staring disappointedly at that solitary sentence, I felt overwhelmingly perplexed and perhaps even a tad disappointed. It has happened to all of us: you compete in a debate, you feel sure that you...
by Ben Brown | Feb 4, 2021 | Concept Analysis, From Advanced to National-Class, From Intermediate to Advanced, Negative, Strategy, Team Policy, Uncategorized
In part 1, we looked at the argument for net benefits being the superior framing as compared to the burden of proof in Team Policy. The short version is that 9 times out of 10, the burden of proof boils down to net benefits anyway. That is, first, if there’s a net...
by Ben Brown | Jan 7, 2021 | From Advanced to National-Class, From Intermediate to Advanced, Negative, Research Tips, Team Policy, Thinking Strategically
Each year, my debate club requires every student to go through the NCFCA’s “Comprehensive Guide to Policy Debate” curriculum in the fall, regardless of experience level. Having read it multiple times before, I was skimming the week’s assigned chapter twenty or...
by Kyle Lee | Jan 5, 2021 | From Intermediate to Advanced, Negative, Strategy
Throughout my career in Team Policy Debate, I’ve always tried my hardest to brief every case I could and figure out all the cases at the tournament as soon as possible. I’ve spent late nights after tournament competition staying up to research cases and...
by Ben Brown | Dec 10, 2020 | Counterplans, From Advanced to National-Class, From Intermediate to Advanced, Negative, Team Policy
A few months ago, for the first time in my Team Policy career, I wrote a Negative brief which centered around a topical counterplan. Having never attempted this before, I had to sit down for a good while and think through the theoretical justifications for such...
by Thad Burson | Oct 30, 2019 | Negative
We’ve all been there before: It’s the start of a fresh season of speech and debate, you’ve begun building your affirmative case, and you’re itching to begin prepping negative briefs against your biggest opponents. The only problem is, you don’t know what they’re...
