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January 15, 2012

On behalf of the James Madison Center, and JMU Debate we are pleased and excited to invite you to compete for the Madison Cup at the 12th annual “James Madison Commemorative Debate and Citizens Forum” on Thursday, April 12th, 2012.

The James Madison Commemorative Debate and Citizens Forum is a unique inter-collegiate debate competition, which combines the excitement and challenge of tournament competition with the relevance and empowerment of a public audience and audience participation.   

We are pleased to continue our partnership with The Arthur N. Rupe Foundation. The funding provided by the Rupe Foundation allows us to provide prize money to the top ten teams, the top twelve debaters and three teams qualifying for travel stipends.

2012 Topic: This House stands resolved that: The United States has an obligation to support emerging democracies in the Middle East and Northern Africa

Other cool and unique features:

   *$30,000.00 in prize money
   *Debating and competing in front of public audiences
   *No entry fees
   *Continental breakfast, snacks and lunch provided
   *Video web-cast of the final round
   *Great PR for your debate program

The tournament details are enclosed with this letter.  If you should have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We look forward to hosting you in April!

Mike Davis, Ph. D.               Pete Bsumek, Ph.D.
Co-Director, Madison Cup Debates         Co-Director, Madison Cup Debates
School of Comm. Studies            School of Comm. Studies
James Madison University            James Madison University
(O) 540-568-7308               (O) 540-568-3386
(E-mail) davismk@jmu.edu            (E-mail) bsumekpk@jmu.edu
 

 
Background: The James Madison Center at James Madison University sponsors the event in the spirit of James Madison's ideal that a republican democracy is healthy only when informed and civil debate thrives. The final round will be broadcast on the World Wide Web.  Last year’s debate featured teams from American University, City University of New York, Claremont Colleges, Cornell University, George Mason University, James Madison University, Liberty University, Piedmont College, Southeastern College, Towson University, University of Alaska, University of Mary Washington, University of Richmond, University of Vermont, Virginia Commonwealth University, Wake Forest University, and Yale University.

The Arthur N. Rupe Foundation has agreed to serve as the sponsor for the 2012 Madison Cup and we are humbled by their continued commitment to furthering public debate. They have agreed to maintain team and student awards from last year, as well increasing travel stipends to a total of $10,000 for teams that qualify through the application process outlined below.

We are hopeful that this will be the strongest field that we have had so please enter early.
 
Eligible Participants:  Each school may enter one two-person team.  The debate is open to undergraduate students who are in good standing at their respective institutions.  Second teams will be considered on a case-by-case basis, if space permits. 

Competition Format:  The debate uses a “long table” format.  This is a public debate.   Last year there was an audience of around 500 people for the final round, preliminary rounds were smaller (audiences of 20-30 people).   The “long table” format features three (two person) teams on each side of the question.  Speeches start with the affirmative and alternate between the affirmative and negative throughout the debate.  Teams are randomly assigned to sides and speaker positions.  In other words, if a team is selected to be the first affirmative, they will give the first two affirmative speeches in the debate.  The first and last speeches on each side of the question are uninterruptible.  Any member of the opposing team may interrupt the speeches in the middle of the debate in order to ask the speaker to yield to a question.  Speakers are not required to answer these questions (although not answering questions may cause the audience to think that the speaker is “dodgy”).  Please see the example format below for more information.  You can view the 2010 final round at: http://www.jmu.edu/debate/madisoncup/2010.shtml

Jury Adjudication Procedure:  A three to seven member panel, or jury, will adjudicate the debate.  Juries will be comprised of local residents, students, professors, distinguished JMU alumni, and special invited guests.  At the completion of the debate, the panel will adjourn to discuss, deliberate and decide upon the winners as a group.  The jury votes for (2-person) teams, not sides of the question.  In other words, first place could go to an affirmative team, while second place could be awarded to a negative team. 
 
Tournament Procedures:

*Number of rounds: This year we will offer three preliminary rounds of debate and one final round.

*Switch side debate: Each team will debate at least once on the affirmative and once on the negative. 

*Side & position:  Sides (affirmative or negative), and positions (first affirmative team, first negative team, second affirmative team, etc) for the preliminary debates will be determined by random drawing.

*Judging: Judges will rank teams 1-6 in each preliminary debate, and assign each team quality points based on a one hundred point scale (1-100).

*Advancing to the final round: The six teams with the lowest total ranks will advance to the final round.  Quality points will be used to break ties.

*Sides and Speaking Positions in the final round:  Sides and speaking positions in the final round will be based on seeding after the preliminary rounds.  For example, the first seeded team will choose their “side and position,” then the second seed will choose “side and position,” and so on.

Public Participation:  While the jury deliberates, the floor will be opened for audience comments and speeches.  An award for the best floor speech will be presented.  Local newspapers, politicians, and the general public are invited.

Awards:  The first place team will leave with the Madison Cup—a very nice traveling trophy. Once again this year there is a $15,000.00 purse of prize money.  All participants in the final round will be recognized with awards.

      Prize money will be awarded as follows:
      1st place: $5000.00 donation to your debate program
      2nd place: $3000.00 donation to your debate program
      3rd place: $2000.00 donation to your debate program
      4th—6th place: $1000.00 donation to your debate program
7th-10th place: $500.00 donation to your debate program

Any student who participates in the final round will receive a prize to be distributed in the form of a scholarship. The top team will receive $2,000 per student and the remaining students in the final round will receive $1,000. This is a doubling of student prize money from last year.
 

Entry:  There are no entry fees. We can accommodate a field of 36 teams.  Entry is on a first come, first serve basis.  The first 18 teams to enter are guaranteed a spot in the field, after that we will accept teams, if we can generate a field divisible by 4 or 6.  Deadline for entry is March 15th.  This is necessary so we can determine how many debates there will be in each round.  Send school info, team info (first and last names of debaters) and requests for additional teams to:  Dr. Mike Davis, davismk@jmu.edu

Travel Stipend: This year we are pleased to offer a travel stipend of $2,000 to three teams that are able to demonstrate that they would add significantly to the quality and diversity of teams participating in this year’s competition. In addition to these stipends we are also able to offer and additional $4,000 in smaller stipends to schools that are on the East Coast or would only require partial assistance. To complete your application for travel stipends please visit: http://jmu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_3ZUZCKc3WFPUype

Your application should be submitted by March 1st. We will use the following criteria when deciding which teams are awarded the stipend:
•   Quality of Team- What is the team’s competitive success? Do they have prior public debate experience?
•   Diversity- How does the team add to the diversity of the event? Things such as regional, institution, debate format will all be considered.
•   Budget – What level of funding does your administration provide? How many students does that budget currently serve? Would the team be able to attend the competition otherwise?
•   Previous Competitor – Is your school new to the competition? Will participation in this event/receiving the stipend assist in future development of your debate program?

Lodging: We have reserved a block of hotel rooms at two area hotels. Both rates will be available until March 18th.

The Best Western Inn.  The phone number for the Best Western is 540-433-6089.  The rate for 1-4 people per room is $56.00 + tax.  When calling the Best Western Inn please mention that you are attending the Madison Cup debates at JMU.

The Comfort Inn. The phone number for The Comfort Inn is (540) 433-6066. The rate is 1-4 people per room is $79 + tax. When calling please mention that you are attending the Madison Cup debates at JMU.

Travel:  James Madison University is located in Harrisonburg, VA, which is two hours southwest of Washington, D.C. on I-81.  If you plan to fly consider Dullas and Washington National/Reagan Airports in Washington DC (2 hours away), Richmond airport (2 hours away), Charlottesville airport (one hour away) and the Shenandoah Regional Airport (15 minutes away).  We will arrange transport from Shenandoah and Charlottesville, we’ll do our best to work with you from the others.
 

Schedule:

Thursday, April 12th, 2012:  James Madison Commemorative Debate and Citizens Forum

8:00 AM: Pick up at the Best Western or Warsaw Street Parking Deck
8:00AM-9:00AM  registration and Announcements
9:30 AM: Preliminary debate round 1
11:00 AM Preliminary debate round 2
1:00 PM Lunch
2:00PM: Preliminary debate round 3 (announcement of the final round participants)
5:00 PM: Final round (followed by the presentation of the Madison Cup)









Example Debate Format: The 2004 final round proceeded as follows.

1st Affirmative Speech (Wake Forest #1): (4 minutes) uninterrupted

1st Negative Speech (George Mason #1): (4 minutes) uninterrupted

2nd Affirmative Speech (Wake Forest  #2): (5 minutes):  The first and last minute of the speech are uninterruptible.  In the 2nd-4th minutes of the speech any opposition debater may ask the speaker to yield to a question.  The speaker may accept, or decline the question.

2nd Negative Speech (George Mason #2): (5 minutes): The first and last minute of the speech are uninterruptible.  In the 2nd-4th minutes of the speech any opposition debater may ask the speaker to yield to a question.  The speaker may accept, or decline the question.

3rd Affirmative Speech (Georgetown # 1): (5 minutes): The first and last minute of the speech are uninterruptible.  In the 2nd-4th minutes of the speech any opposition debater may ask the speaker to yield to a question.  The speaker may accept, or decline the question.

3rd Negative Speech (James Madison #1): (5 minutes): The first and last minute of the speech are uninterruptible.  In the 2nd-4th minutes of the speech any opposition debater may ask the speaker to yield to a question.  The speaker may accept, or decline the question.

4th Affirmative Speech (Georgetown #2): (5 minutes) The first and last minute of the speech are uninterruptible.  In the 2nd-4th minutes of the speech any opposition debater may ask the speaker to yield to a question.  The speaker may accept, or decline the question.

4th Negative Speech (James Madison #2): (5 minutes) The first and last minute of the speech are uninterruptible.  In the 2nd-4th minutes of the speech any opposition debater may ask the speaker to yield to a question.  The speaker may accept, or decline the question.

5th Affirmative Speech (Mary Washington #1):  (5 minutes) The first and last minute of the speech are uninterruptible.  In the 2nd-4th minutes of the speech any opposition debater may ask the speaker to yield to a question.  The speaker may accept, or decline the question.

5th Negative Speech (Towson #1): The first and last minute of the speech are uninterruptible.  In the 2nd-4th minutes of the speech any opposition debater may ask the speaker to yield to a question.  The speaker may accept, or decline the question.

6th Affirmative Speech (Mary Washington #2):  (4 minutes) Uninterrupted

6th Negative Speech (Towson University #2):  (4 minutes) Uninterrupted

The CAT is now cooperating, so you should be able to enter ballots and follow results online.
Please still fill out a paper copy of your ballots for verification.

Rounds are in Turlington (TUR) today.
Rounds start at 9am.

Any chance you've updated this with results from Cal/Texas, etc.?

J.

+1 on MalGor's comments regarding judging. Makes me really think twice about how I judge debate rounds.

As far as "fabricating" evidence, I am as willing to accept Patrick's analysis of US Democracy Assistance as being as authoritative as at least a third of the cards I get handed after most debates I judge. I'm guessing he's probably done more research on the topic than most authors we read anyway...

n.b. - this doesn't mean I think this would be high-quality evidence, just that I think a significant portion of the evidence I hear is just abysmally bad.

J.

I don't post on this board with any frequency, but find this thread embarrassing and borderline defamatory.

It attacks an undergraduate student, accuses him of improper motives, and then follows up with absurd demands for specific remediation.   It is unfair to the student to Mary Washington, and to A. Brovero.

Having personally received a humble phone call back in 1994 from A. Brovero regarding Wake's use of evidence that was falsified by another program I know how seriously she takes this isuse and to casually accuse students of engaging in this behavior is detestable. 

At least when bad ethics arguments are made in rounds (or at least back when I debated and judged) you would lose the round.  What happens when coaches casually make them?

Agree with Jonah on this:


"I would hope that nobody would read this card in a debate.  The potential for complications from this blog entry in my mind speaks more to problems about what we consider evidence in a debate round than an underhanded act to manufacture solvency cards."

First of all, that card's not even very good.  I'm not being harsh on the student here because the writing fits the goal of the blog.  But if this student were actually manufacturing evidence I would hope he could do a better job.

Now, to Jonah's point, this is about what we consider evidence in a round.  Many would disagree, but I am of the opinion that many judges don't really care where the card comes from as long as it matches what the debaters say.  It's not my style, but it certainly is the style of some judges.

I think evidence quality is one of several issues in debate where everyone agrees it's important, everyone claims debaters should stake more rounds on it, but often the judges talk the talk without walking the walk.  I partially blame this on the offense/defense cult.  "your card is not qualified" is fundamentally evaluated as a defensive argument, therefore it is not a viable option to completely mitigate the risk or truth of another person's argument. It's very, very rare that I hear a judge willing to assess zero risk of an argument because it is unqualified (and this is assuming the other team is not only pointing out it's unqualified, but making warranted, analytic responses to the argument to prove it is illogical or unlikely).

To put it this way:  I've been on more panels where the rationale for an argument being disregarded was "well you don't have a card on that" than panels where the rationale for an argument being disregarded was "your claim is shaky and your source has no qualifications." 

In my mind, if we are going to create a community norm that says 'source is largely irrelevant' then the conclusion shouldn't be to cling onto the need for evidence to support all arguments.  If we can listen to barely qualified, or unqualified, or unknown (there is a K card from a user on a forum post named "Herod" that has won many teams debates) authors, then why not grant equal weight to what the debater says?  It's not like the process of putting your words on the internet is so cumbersome that we should intrinsically give more credit to a card found online than we should to a debater. 

It's a delicate balance, indeed.  As a judge I value high quality peer reviewed evidence AND logical, well-warranted analytic refutation of some arguments-fortunately the potential contradiction never manifests itself when I'm judging because I rarely hear either in any given debate.

Given its accusatory nature, I strongly recommend that a moderator (or original poster) remove the original post. 

It's hard to scrub stuff from the Internet, even if it's inaccurate.  That's kind of the (a) problem with libel.  The sooner it's deleted, the better.

Agreed with Kurr, Brovero, and others.

Look, the fact that we have abysmally poor standards for what we value as evidence is not the fault of students engaging in legitimate academic activities beyond debate that overlap with debate knowledge.

None of this would be an issue if we, as judges and coaches, emphasized these standards.  I'm pretty sure I've participated in a lot of justification of our activity analysis over the last few years, and media criticism and the ability to discern accuracy and source in the age of the internet is supposed to be one of our selling points.

Debaters should question the source of information AS AN ARGUMENT IN DEBATES.  Qual debates good on unknown assertion of conclusions.  Judges should probably comment on evidence that is problematic in that way (because if people are going to need that many cards after the rounds, perhaps commenting on them as ev might be educational). 

So basically, we should debate better, which checks the problems people are citing from student written sources in above scenarios, rather than not expect the rest of the academic universe to participate in the electronic age.

Also, yeah, talking to directors can also solve ....

Remember all those topicality and framework debates where we focus on the importance of topic specific education and the ability to use that education in positive ways? It seems completely arbitrary and nebulous to say that debaters and coaches can only use that research once the NDT is over. The real culprit you are after is the tendency in debate  to cut anything that is on a post somewhere without checking qualifications or even what type of publication the site is.

Go after debaters who cut cards from bad sources with no qualifications. Do not go after debaters who apply what they learn in debate to other activities.