by Anthony Severin | Jul 11, 2021 | Advocacy, Basics, Counterplans, Fiat, From Advanced to National-Class, Negative, Theory, Uncategorized
What must an affirmative team do to win a policy debate round? The affirmative should win if they convince the judge that the audience and the debaters are better off if the judge votes affirmative. Conversely, the negative should win if they convince the judge that...
by Ellie Harris | May 1, 2021 | Advocacy, Affirmatives, From Intermediate to Advanced, Negative
In Voting Issues Part I, we discussed three common problems surrounding voters and how to avoid them by not running voters at all. But this doesn’t mean you should never run voters! It’s important to understand how to debate without voters, but at the same time many...
by Patrick McDonald | Apr 8, 2021 | Debate Blog, Negative, TP
“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, Debate Blog, From Advanced to National-Class, From Intermediate to Advanced, Negative, Strategy, TP, 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 | Debate Blog, From Advanced to National-Class, From Intermediate to Advanced, Negative, Research, Thinking Strategically, TP
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...
