Double Entry

A participant may enter up to two different speech events.  Debate or congress entries may not double enter.

Varsity and Junior-Varsity Lincoln-Douglas Debate

The resolution will be the November-December National Forensic League topic.  Both LD divisions will follow the 6-3-7-3-4-6-3 format.  Debaters will have 4 minutes of prep time.  Ties will be broken based on record, adjusted points, total points, double-adjusted points, judge variance, opponents’ record, and flip of a coin, in that order.  The break will be to double-octafinals in Varsity and Novice LD debate.  Novice is limited to first-year forensics competitors only.  Novice LD will also be using the November-December topic; the Northeast Modest Novice topic does not extend into December.

Public Forum Debate

There will be a single, open division of public forum debate.  We will follow all of the NFL rules for the event as they stand for the start of the school year.  The tournament will use the NFL topic for December, 2009.  Ties will be broken using the same criteria as Lincoln-Douglas Debate.  The event will break to double octafinals. New this year: Public Forum will feature limited open tab of the kind used at other invitationals around the country.

Congressional Debate

There will be a single, open division of Congressional Debate.  Chambers will be composed of no more than 20 members.  Sunday’s competition will again feature a semifinal round in the morning and a final round in the afternoon. The final round will feature a scenario written by Jeff Hannan of Evanston High School in Illinois, and Jared Sonnenklar of George Washington University. Legislation must be emailed to princetonbills@tabroom.com by 7 PM on Friday, November 20th, 2009.  Legislation must include the name of the school and the author; failure to include these items will results in the rejection of the legislation.  Only one item may be submitted by each registrant to a maximum of four items of legislation per school. Legislation from authors not registered for the tournament, or legislation that has not been received by that date, will not be included. We will assign chambers and dockets and publish both on the Princeton Invitational website on Monday, November 30th.

Speech Events

Extemp, Oratory, DI, HI and Duo will follow National Forensic League rules and guidelines.  Oral Interpretation of Literature will follow National Catholic Forensic League rules and guidelines.  We will use the NCFL’s guidelines for published material in interp events.  The grace period will be 30 seconds for all speech events.  Any IE participant who exceeds the grace may not receive a rank of 1 in the round; any further penalty will be at the discretion of the judge.  A participant may only be penalized for a time violation if the judge has used a precise timing device and notes the penalty on the ballot.

Speech competition Saturday will be held entirely at the campus of nearby Princeton Day School.  This change will make for easier travel between rounds and better logistics.  It also allows us to offer five preliminary rounds of IE competition.  We will not offer 5 preliminary rounds in any events where a small entry size would make it unmanageable and impossible for students to have a variety of competition, but we’ll avoid that as much as possible.  Speech events with more than 60 competitors will break to quarterfinals; events with 50-60 will break to a “super-semi” of 18 competitors; 30-50 will break to a 12 competitor semi.  Tabbing is cumulative, with the worst prelim rank dropped after the initial elim break.  We will ordinarily advance “extra” competitors who are tied on ranks if doing so is logistically feasible. However, to do so, these “extra” elimination contestants receive may not receive the same awards as others at the same tier.  The Extemp final round will feature cross-examination in accordance with NFL rules.

All rules are subject to change.  The tournament will make you aware of any changes at registration.