Week 1: Tournament Prep, Capitalism, and Debate Basics

Maria G P -

Hi! My name is Maria, and I’m a senior at BASIS Shavano. I’ve been involved in debate for 5 years, including competing, teaching, and directing a free international summer institute. For my senior project, I am coaching two high school policy debate teams at Holmes High School and Heights High School and comparing the differences between the competitive leagues they participate in (urban debate leagues versus more heavily suburban debate leagues). I’m excited to learn more about the community that means so much to me and to share the process with you! 

Before we jump into details, it’s important to clear up some basic debate terminology and provide an explanation for what competitive policy debate looks like. Some people’s conceptualization of debate is informed by what they see labeled as “debates” in the media. Most of these formats, like political candidate debates, congressional debates, arguments people have on the internet, etc. are much more unstructured than competitive forms of debate, which function as a strategy game. Policy debates consist of two teams, one affirming and one negating. Each team has two debaters, who trade off giving that side’s speeches. There are four affirmative (“aff”) speeches and four negative (“neg”) speeches in this order: 

  • 1st aff constructive (1ac) 
  • 1st neg constructive (1nc)
  • 2nd aff constructive (2ac)
  • 2nd neg constructive (2nc) 
  • 1st neg rebuttal (1nr)
  • 1st aff rebuttal (1ar)
  • 2nd neg rebuttal (2nr) 
  • 2nd aff rebuttal (2ar) 

 

Each constructive speech is 8 minutes long, and each rebuttal is 5 minutes long. Each constructive speech is followed by a 3-minute cross-examination/questioning period (“cross”). The back-to-back neg speeches in the middle of the debate are called the “neg block.” 

 

Policy debaters debate the same resolution, or statement, all school year. This year’s resolution is “Resolved: The United States federal government should significantly strengthen its protection of domestic intellectual property rights in copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks.”  “Resolved” serves to initialize that there is a conflict regarding the resolution that needs to be solved by the judge voting aff or neg. The affirmative chooses one of the 3 areas in which to strengthen intellectual property rights (IPR) and proposes a plan that delineates how they aim to do so and why it’s a good idea. The negative presents several reasons why the 1ac is not a good idea, sometimes including a better way to fix the issues articulated by the 1ac (a counter plan). They may also present a “T”, or topicality argument that states the specific action of the 1ac does not fall within the resolution. For example, an affirmative that facilitates the copyright of Indigenous intellectual products isn’t considered “domestic” because Indigenous tribes are sovereign nations. Each speech before the 2nr consists of a combination of analytical arguments and evidence. In debate, evidence is formatted into a “card” that allows the evidence to be read more efficiently. Cards look like this: 

The 1ac and 1nc arguments, for the most part, dictate the direction of the rest of the debate. The organization of a debate round makes it much more structured than other kinds of debate, and a season of debates over the same resolution means students often become highly knowledgeable about the topic area. Each tournament involves anywhere from 3-12 debates, and students will affirm around half of those rounds and negate the other half. Understanding some policy debate basics will be useful for understanding portions of my senior project. 

As for my project, I’m working on different arguments and skills with Heights and Holmes.  Heights High School is in Houston, where I am staying during my senior project, so I am able to go to their class physically. Holmes High School is in San Antonio, so I am meeting with them virtually roughly 3 times a week. 

Holmes competes in mostly UIL and TFA debate. The UIL State Championship is coming up on the 20th, and one of their teams qualified. Thus, we are mostly preparing for that tournament. We spent most of our time this week brainstorming arguments for the 1nc. They didn’t like some of the arguments that they had been reading earlier in the season and wanted to experiment with other arguments. We talked about running an argument called a “Cap K” or a critique of capitalism but are unsure how strategic it would be for UIL. The Cap K is a newer type of argument and most UIL judges prefer more traditional arguments based on conventional politics. Aside from that, I “cut” (researched, read, and formatted) some evidence for them to help them prepare for their upcoming tournament. 

I also spent some time organizing the Google Drive where they keep all of their evidence. Most teams use Dropbox, but Holmes chooses to use Google Drive because it’s easier to access at school. They had a combination of evidence packets that universities hosting debate summer institutes release before the school year starts, evidence updates for arguments that change quickly (like those related to the current administration), old speeches, versions of their 1ac, etc., so I organized their files into categories based on what kind of document they are. I also created team folders for teams to use during tournaments and individual folders for students to save their in-progress research files. I have been working with Holmes for a few weeks now, and they are in the process of consolidating all of their 2ac evidence from previous tournaments to create one file they can use for any aff round. In the following week, I will continue to organize their Drive and will likely look for evidence to fill in the gaps in their 2ac file. 

This was my first week working with the debate class at Heights High School. They compete mostly in the Houston Urban Debate League, and one of their teams is qualified to compete at the Urban Debate National Championships in April. I spent some time helping that team prepare, and I spoke to their debate teacher about what concepts they had covered and what plans we thought would be best for the class. The teacher, Mr. Paniagua, doesn’t have any experience teaching debate (although he has been teaching English for 5 years) so I have a lot of autonomy regarding what I want to teach. I also introduced myself to the students, most of whom are underclassmen in their first year of debate. 

Mr. Paniagua and I had originally discussed going over “Ks”, or Kritiks (like the Cap K Holmes might run), which are a type of argument usually run by the negative that criticizes an assumption about how the world works made by the other team. For example, some Ks criticize the capitalist, colonialist, ableist, etc. ideologies behind the other team’s arguments as opposed to their economic or political impacts. Ultimately, we decided to table that idea for a few weeks because we both felt that students could use a refresher about other debate basics like round and argument structure, proper notetaking (called “flowing”), the resolution, and other common arguments. They learned these concepts at the beginning of the year, but haven’t been using them much second semester, so a quick run-through of the basics would be beneficial. 

The debate class meets 3 times a week, and on the last day, they receive weekly lectures on Marxism from a professor at the University of Houston. I used this time to work on a detailed plan for the following weeks with Mr. Paniagua. Originally, we had planned to add me as a teacher on their Canvas so I could give out assignments but couldn’t because of school district policy restricting non-HISD emails. Thus, we agreed on a joint spreadsheet with a timeline, learning objectives, and links to respective assignments to post on Canva. Over break, I plan to work on the timeline and the lectures I’ll give after the break. 

Overall, I had a great time working with both teams this week and am very excited to help both the debate novices and those preparing for highly competitive tournaments. I hope you enjoyed a brief introduction to the world of debate, and I look forward to filling you in on the following weeks’ developments! 

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Comments:

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    mariska_k
    Hey Maria! As a TFA/NSDA debater, I'm super excited to learn more about UDL through your project! With both Holmes and Heights, you seem to have introduced concepts of the Cap K and Marxism. Do you think it's important for debaters to read source Marx and understand historical materialism before delving into more common Cap K literature (Saito, Escalante, Harvey, etc.)? Also, is judging at UDNC similar to the traditional ideals seen at UIL State? If so, do you think there's a more traditional way of running/phrasing the Cap K so that students can still apply their knowledge of Marxism? Looking forward to hearing about Holmes' experiences at UIL State!
    March 20, 2025 at 11:17 am - Reply
    james_l
    Hey Maria! I don't know a lot about how debate works so your summary of how competitions and rounds work was really helpful! Your project seems to be a very meaningful way to give back to the debate community while also collecting data for your main project question. You mentioned that Holmes was hesitant about running a Cap K due to judge preferences. How much of debate strategy is about choosing arguments you believe in versus tailoring arguments to what judges are more likely to accept? Also, you mentioned working on organizing Holmes’ Google Drive and helping consolidate their evidence. Have you come across any particularly unique or surprising arguments while going through their files? Looking forward to your next update!
    March 20, 2025 at 12:19 pm - Reply
    geoju_a
    Hey Maria, your project sounds exciting, especially with the opportunity to stay in Houston throughout your senior project! You mentioned that your goal is to highlight the differences between the leagues the two schools compete in. From your first week working with the students, have you noticed any of those differences, or do you expect the significant distinctions to become more apparent after the debate tournaments? Also, will you be accompanying the students to their tournaments and mentoring them during competitions as well? I look forward to reading more of your blog posts and seeing how your project unfolds!
    March 20, 2025 at 12:25 pm - Reply
    mariana_g_p
    Hi Mariska, thanks for your questions. I was able to see how the Heights students interacted with source Marx since that is what the U of H professor who gives guest lectures is having them read. They are reading Wage Labor and Capital (a pamphlet rather than a full book). They read each paragraph in groups and summarized it. Then, the professor ensured that each group fully understood each paragraph. The process was extremely slow. The professor also had them interact with ideas from the pamphlet in other ways, like drawing a picture of how they view labor relations as described by Marx and explaining it to the class. Often, the professor had to rephrase parts of the text so students understood it. This left me with the impression that for their age group (9th-10th graders), source Marx was teachable but difficult.  From a portable skills standpoint, capitalism has progressed significantly since Marx’s time. Perhaps a discussion of how capitalism affects different groups in a contemporary sense, such as rising sea levels encroaching on the land people live on, or how the military actively recruits from and targets low-income schools, using language more accessible to students is more valuable than an in-depth understanding of historical materialism and having read Das Kapital cover to cover. To agree or disagree with an argument and learn to debate it, students have to understand the argument first. Materialism is important, but can 100% be taught in a lecture instead of reading Marx, especially for young debaters. From a debate standpoint, I can think of maybe one cap debate where the words “historical materialism” were used. As long as students understand the basics of Marxism, they can understand more common cap authors.  As for UDNC judges, it’s a very mixed bag. There are far fewer stock issues judges than at UIL, but there are still enough that debaters should know what they are. There’s also a lot more K debate than there is at UIL. I think that prefs would have a lot to do with how students run the Cap K. Debaters would likely have to adapt their language to what stock issues judges prefer, like phrasing impacts in terms of harms and significance, going lighter on the framework debate, and treating the ToP and the alt more as a DA and CP. 
    March 24, 2025 at 3:13 pm - Reply
    mariana_g_p
    Hi James. This is a really good question because it touches on some of the core components of debate that make it such a unique educational activity. People want to win, and want a fair shot at winning, which informs how the debate space goes about arguments. The short answer is it depends.  First is the resolution being a stasis point for the debate. This differentiates debate from conversations, online debates, and political debates because the literature revolving around the resolution combined with community evidence ethics and quality standards means there is a limited amount of things to talk about. Even if you believe something, unless there is someone credible writing about it and it falls under the resolution, it doesn’t matter for your win-loss record. There are some exceptions to this when it comes to K debate, but the vast majority of debate will talk about the resolution. Most people don’t have particularly strong opinions on IPRs, but nearly all people want to win.  The next is “tech over truth”. The expectation is that judges will not vote on what they think is true, but on what arguments debaters made or didn’t respond to. There are of course exceptions when it comes to violent (racist, sexist, etc.) arguments, but judges are to vote for who won and was most persuasive and responsive, not who best aligned with their views or who made the most true arguments. This means debaters can pick and choose what arguments they want to defend. If someone makes an argument that climate change is not real, and the other team drops it (doesn’t respond), then that argument is functionally true in the debate. Thus, debaters will not always choose arguments they are personally attached to if they are not the most strategic/difficult to answer.  The most important is “switch side debate” or SSD. Everyone will affirm and negate the resolution roughly the same amount of rounds throughout the season. If you hit (debate) a team on the neg that reads the same aff that you do, to win you have to prove your own aff wrong. Thus, most debaters aren’t particularly tied to the arguments they read.  As for judges, there are some things that some judges don’t like. This doesn’t mean they won’t vote on that argument, but it will be harder to convince them. This doesn’t usually revolve around specific arguments, but rather what they think the rules of debate should be (for example, if the neg should be able to read multiple counterplans). Debaters will rarely change their aff and neg strategy based on the judge, but the way that they package and articulate those arguments may change.  So in sum, it’s not about choosing arguments that you believe in, it’s about choosing arguments that are strategic and articulating them in a way that the judges will buy. Generally, the higher the level of the tournament, the less judge adaptation is required since judges believe in tech over truth more and have more experience judging. UIL generally is known for mediocre judging, which is why they were hesitant to run the K.  As for the Drive, I was surprised to find a draft of a “soft left” aff that advocates for IPRs as a mechanism to advance women’s rights. Soft left affs are usually ones that revolve social justice of some form without totally rejecting the resolution as a stasis point for the debate. Aside from that, there were a lot of individual speeches from past tournaments as opposed to a consolidated file with all responses for a speech that can be used in every round. 
    March 24, 2025 at 4:47 pm - Reply
    mariana_g_p
    Hi Geoju,  I did notice that the UDL debaters, especially the varsity debaters, were more comfortable hitting progressive arguments like those revolving around anti-blackness. In preparing for UDNC with Heights, we made a list of the arguments that each team attending runs (more details in my week 2 blog), and although those arguments are more threatening, they had more practice with them than the UIL debaters at Holmes would. I generally expected this, since I know that UDNC has some of the best K debaters attending, but I hadn’t realized the degree to which this would be true. As for the novice debaters at Heights, they didn’t have any experience with progressive/K debate, which surprised me. I thought that most UDLs would have a decent amount of K debate, but I’ve learned that it largely depends on the city. Houston’s local UDL doesn’t have much K debate, but other UDLs do, so only Houston teams that have competed nationally have gained experience answering them. To be honest, neither team has very many tournaments left in the season, but I expect that the more I work with them, the more details I will notice. We’re also going to be doing practice rounds with Heights later in my project, so I expect to see how they handle K debates with more clarity then, as my partner and I run Ks only.  I was planning on attending the tournaments they had left, but I was unable to as both UDNC and UIL State are/were on the dates I have/had competitions of my own. I was looking forward to doing tournament coaching, and I’m excited to get to do some in college now. 
    March 24, 2025 at 5:06 pm - Reply

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