Flash Player Judge Orientation
One of fastest and easiest ways to begin to understand team policy debate as practiced by CCNW is to watch our on-line judge orientation. This orientation is presented in Flash Player format and runs about thirty minutes. For judges, and debaters, the most important part is the first 10 minutes or so discussing the Stock Issues, the debate decision criteria. The remainder of the orientation covers more details that are not as important for the judge, but are very important for the debaters.
CCNW Debate Rules
If you would like to follow up on the details of the rules used by CCNW to govern its debates, these are found in Chapter A3 of the CCNW Manual. CCNW employs a set of rules designed to be as clear and thorough as possible so that the in-round argumentation is about the policy presented in the Resolution rather than about debate theory or protocol. Consistent with the judge orientation, a key portion of the debate rules is found in Section A3.5 addressing the Stock issues.
Example Debate Round
Once you have a feel for our style of debate, you may find watching a sample debate round interesting and instructive. The sample round available at the link above is a Salem Debate Club practice round from a couple of years ago. This round was chosen as representative of "typical" CCNW debates. It was held for the purpose of helping beginning debaters see first hand the debating skills we wanted them to develop. After the round the club conducted a discussion session to analyze the round to bring out what was well done, what could have been done better, and how a judge should analyze the round in preparation for filling out a ballot.
Example Debate Round Analysis
CCNW debate is built on focussing on fundamentals. Our strict adherence to a simple, straightforward decision criteria (the Stock Issues), allows both debaters and judges to understand the debate round from the same perspective. This perspective states that for a policy change to be desirable there should be three clear elements: (1) A need for change today (Significance), (2) The need continuing into the future (Inherency), and (3) A change that creates satisfactory solution (Solvency). In this document we summarize and analyze the example debate round according to the Stock Issues and Speaker Criteria in a manner similar to our in-club discussion to help prospective debate families and prospective judges learn more about analyzing and evaluating debate.
CCNW Ballot
After each debate round the judge renders his decision on the standard CCNW ballot. On the ballot the judge indicates the team that won the debate using the Stock Issue criteria, explains why he voted the way he did on each Stock Issue, and then scores each debater's speaking performance. The ballots provide excellent guidance to the debaters on strengths and weaknesses, and how to improve in future debates.