The National Parliamentary Debate Association (NPDA) is one of the two national intercollegiate parliamentary debate organizations in the United States. The other is the American Parliamentary Debate Association. Its membership is national with participating schools throughout the country. In 2015, NPDA was the largest debating organization in the United States with around 200-250 participating schools in any given year.[1]
In tournaments sponsored or sanctioned by the NPDA, teams of two debate head-to-head. Tournaments issue a new topic each round, generally on issues such as politics, philosophy and current affairs. After the announcement of the topic, the two teams have 15 minutes to prepare plus the time it takes to walk to the furthest away round in which debates will be taking place (usually rounded to 20 minutes), during which to write out their respective cases.
The standard time limits for an NPDA debate are:
Preparation period: 20 minutes
First proposition speaker: 7 minutes
First opposition speaker: 8 minutes
Second proposition speaker: 8 minutes
Second opposition speaker: 8 minutes
Opposition rebuttal: 4 minutes
Proposition rebuttal: 5 minutes
There are tournaments, however, at which these are modified, generally to a 7-7-7-7-5-5 format. The Claremont Colleges tournament, for instance, uses this 7-5 format. During constructive speeches, debaters may introduce new arguments and the speaker's opponents may rise to ask questions of the speaker. Constructive speakers can accept or reject any given question. Rebuttals are exclusively for summarizing the arguments that were made during constructives.
Over the past few years,[when?] many coaches and competitors have referred to the official title of speeches with different names. These are unofficial yet very popular with many judges:
Prime Minister Constructive
Leader of Opposition Constructive
Member of Government Constructive
Member of Opposition Constructive
Leader of Opposition Rebuttal
Prime Minister Rebuttal
Debaters may not bring in printed, published evidence and consult it during the round. It is expected that debaters will use their own pre-existing knowledge and research conducted prior to the start of the actual round to back their arguments with reasoning and empirical data. This places parliamentary debate in stark contrast to the other common intercollegiate debate format, policy debate, where debaters may utilize quoted evidence.
Championship Tournament
The NPDA runs one debate tournament each year: the NPDA Championship Tournament, held in late March or early April at rotating host sites. While the inaugural tournament in 1994 only hosted around 40 teams, the 2004 Championship Tournament had over 300 in the field from over a half-dozen nations. The tournament's practices are generally modeled by smaller invitational tournaments, which provide the bulk of year-long competition. NPDA sanctions many of these tournaments, and the school that does the best at sanctioned invitationals over the course of the year is awarded a year-long sweepstakes championship.
Relationship to other tournaments and organizations
There are usually several NPDA-sanctioned invitational tournaments in the US to choose from on almost every weekend of the academic year. The largest of these tournaments include the Mile High Swing held in January co-hosted in recent years[when?] by Texas Tech University and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, the season-opening Bowman Debates at William Jewell College in September, the Steve Hunt Classic held at Lewis & Clark College in October and the Paul Winters Invitational at the University of the Pacific in November.
Communicating between tournaments
Almost from its inception, the NPDA community has taken advantage of the Internet to continue debates (and to debate about debates) between tournaments and in the off season. For years, this took place via the official electronic mailing list, much to the chagrin of those who saw that resource as best used for official communication such as posting tournament invitations and results.
Today, much of the online debate (especially between competitors) in the NPDA community takes place via the online forum Net-Benefits.net, founded by University of Southern California then-undergraduate Jed Link. The name Net-Benefits is a pun, referring to the debate paradigm by which the debate judge weighs the net benefits of two competing policies. The site is now an electronic hub for discourse and information on parliamentary debate.
National champions
Every year since 1994, the organization has held a national championship tournament. Winning teams include:
The Parli Prepbook compiled by Kyle Dennis and written by several coaches and renowned competitors, a community-driven guide to modern parliamentary debate[2]
Strategic Argumentation in Parliamentary Debate by Eric Robertson, good for beginners and intermediate[3]
Art, Argument, and Advocacy: Mastering Parliamentary Debate by John Meany and Kate Shuster, best for intermediate and advanced[4]
On That Point: Introduction to Parliamentary Debate by John Meany, good for beginners[5]
Burden of Proof: An Introductory Guide to Argumentation and Guide to Parliamentary Debate by Mark Crossman, good for beginners[6]
Competitive Debate: The Official Guide by Richard E Edwards, good for high schools and not just parliamentary debate[7]
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