The Deep South NFL District has qualified four Public Forum Debate teams to the NFL National Tournament in June.

Q: Vestavia: Ross Pearlman & Rachel Conry
Q: The Altamont School: David Quinlan & Gates Porter
Q: St James: Amy Shannon & Courtney Meadows
Q: Ramsay: Jennifer Moore & Sydney Page

People are starting to talk about summer debate camps so I did a substantial edit of the Debate Camps page on the PFDebate Wiki. It looks like a few camps have disappeared and a couple of new ones have been added.

If you have factual corrections, please edit the wiki or use contact form on the blog. If you want to discuss debate camps, I encourage you to visit the PFDebate Forums. I know that several camp directors and instructors are actively participating in those threads.

Adam Badrawi & Christopher Winter from Ridge defeated Dhruv Sharma & Kevin Sullivan from Delbarton on a 2–1 decision to win the New Jersey state championship in Public Forum Debate.

Basking Ridge Patch as a story about the success of the Ridge forensics team at the state tournament.

Photo courtesy of Basking Ridge Patch.

The Inland Empire NFL District in Washington has qualified two Public Forum Debate teams to the NFL National Tournament in Kansas City.

Q: Mead: David Spivey & Wraith Snow
Q: Gonzaga Prep: Justin Jurkovac & Mack Foster
A: University: Conner Sabin & Jordan Welter
A: Lake City: Ben Cooper & Zack Schreiber

This past weekend The Harker School hosted the 2010 Harker Beak and Talon Round Robin and the Nichols Invitational.

Kurt Girard & Maggie Jackson from Centaurus (CO) defeated Carl Shan & Pargat Singh from Lynbrook on a 3–2 decision to win the Harker Beak and Talon Round Robin. The semifinalists were Akshay Jagadeesh & Rohan Bopardikar from Harker (CA) and Peter Nauka & Aakash Ghai from Saint Francis (CA). The top speaker was Miles Bridges from James Logan (CA).

Porter Nenon & Ramy El Kalioby from Myers Park (NC) defeated Priyanke Athavale & Meera Suresh from Lynbrook (CA) to win the Nichols Invitational. Also receiving TOC bids as semifinalists were Kimberly Kaiser & Saloni Gangal from Saint Francis (CA) and Daniel Porter & Madeline Karon from St. Paul Academy (MN). The top speaker was Porter Nenon from Myers Park (NC).

Lake Highland Preparatory School’s Danny Welch & Will Miller won the 2010 Florida Forensic League State Championship in Public Forum Debate. Welch & Miller defeated the team of Michael Strauser & Morgan Bell from Sarasota High School on a 3–2 decision. Lake Highland is coached by Mike Wascher. Sarasota is coached by Dr. Terri St-John.

Thirty-five teams competed for the coveted “Eagle” trophies that are given to the champions of the tournament which was held this year at University School on the campus of Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale. After five preliminary rounds the top sixteen teams advanced to the octafinal round.

For Lake Highland’s Miller it was a return to the championship debate as he, with a different partner, finished second last year.

In the final round of Public Forum Debate, Ozan Cubukcu & Michael Gwin from Hawken School defeated Mark Pagano & Emma Shebat from Canfield High School to win the Ohio High School Speech League State Torunament.

Crossfire Briefs — March 2010 (Affirmative Action) is now complete (Crossfire Briefs and Crossfire Update). The index is now available as a free download.

Dear Members of the PFD Community:

For the past couple of months, as questions have grown over the nature of Public Forum topics and the use of topic areas to attract support for the mission of the NFL, I have asked my staff to remain relatively silent to allow the community open discourse without the fog of the NFL National Office’s commentary. Viewing the online discussions has been both enlightening and disconcerting.

On the one hand, the discussion of PFD topic selection has shown that Public Forum Debate and the topics and resolutions that are debated are of great concern to our student and coach members. This undoubtedly means that the event is of great importance to our community and the future of forensics. I could not agree more. During my entire tenure as the Executive Director of the NFL, I have watched Public Forum Debate blossom into the most popular high school debate event in the country. The primary reason for this explosion of participation is access. Public Forum Debate has provided access to debate for thousands of teachers and students around the nation. Public Forum Debate is affordable, classroom friendly, and fun.

The NFL’s mission is to “promote high school and middle school speech and debate activities as a means to develop a student’s essential life skills and values. “ Among several other services, a primary vehicle for accomplishing our mission is to provide the competitive framework for the activity through topic selection, rules establishment, regional and national level competition, and educational resourcing. Another key service is to connect those willing to support the activity with the activity itself. Public Forum Debate, by design, creates this link. It lends itself to community volunteer judging, is easily teachable in workshops and coach clinics, and is attractive to supporters who see PFD as a way for youth to discuss key issues of our time in very creative ways.

Over the past few years, the NFL has embraced this ground swell of support and has tried to use it to the advantage of the activity. We have worked directly with several organizations whose missions are complimentary to ours in the area of youth education. We have tried to be meticulous in our vetting of program partners and sponsors to make sure that the event and the NFL mission are never compromised in the desire to gain more public support. Over the past six years, two national PFD review and recommendation committees have met, a PFD wording recommendation committee has been established, and two national leadership conferences have been held. The result of this effort has been sustained growth of the NFL membership, growth of PFD participation, and growth of organizational and financial support.

With this growth in participation has also come heightened scrutiny over the resolutions being debated each month in Public Forum Debate. I believe that it is a fundamental responsibility of the League to accurately inform its members of the process being used. Although this information is available through publications and various League communications, I do not feel that the PFD community has been adequately informed of the reality of topic selection and topic sponsorship. I am concerned that the PFD community has been misled, misinformed, and misguided on this issue through a variety of sources. Therefore, I would like to clarify the processes being used.

To date, PFD topic selection and topic area sponsorship remains a responsibility of the Office of the Executive Director per order of the NFL Board of Directors. In 2006, the Board established the use of a wording advisory committee to assist the Executive Director and his staff in determining the monthly topics. In 2008, the NFL Board established a set of gift giving policies and sponsorship and partner guidelines as further guidance for the Executive Director. It has been this regulatory framework by the Board that has guided the actions of this office. This framework covers all gift giving and sponsorship activities. This past summer, the Board established another committee to review PFD rules and guidelines (including the process of topic selection). That committee did not recommend a change from the status quo, but in all fairness to disclosure, did not spend substantial time on the particular issue of topic selection.

Currently, two primary scenarios exist for the development of a PFD topic under the current procedures. First, there are months in which the topic area is considered “open.” In these months, the PFD advisory committee vets several options for topic areas and comes to consensus on a single topic area for recommendation. At this time, the Executive Director points out any potential concerns for the committee to consider. Then, assuming the topic area has mutual agreement, the committee creates a recommendation for the wording of the topic area in the form of a resolution. This recommendation is sent to the Executive Director seven days in advance of the topic release date to allow for wording adjustments if there are concerns on the part of the Executive Director. After consent from the Office of the Executive Director, the topic is released per the established schedule.

Second, there are months in which the NFL has secured a project partner or sponsor. In these cases, the Executive Director has determined that a particular topic area (not the specific resolution) should be debated in a particular month. There are times that this results in financial and resource support from the partnering entity. However, it is extremely important for the debate community to understand that partners and sponsors DO NOT determine the wording of the resolution. A sponsor or a partner is never allowed to dictate the wording of a resolution or allowed to micromanage the Executive Director’s final wording decisions. In fact, the wording advisory committee (as with “open” months) is given the opportunity to word the resolution within the provided topic area framework to create a recommendation to the Executive Director. For example, in February, March, and April of this year, the wording committee was given the general topic areas of lobbying, racial preference, and labor unions based on a grant proposal generated by my office. These topic areas are timely and educational and fit within the parameters established by the board. The committee was given the freedom to create the final resolution wording in all three topic areas.

In the case of a partnership or sponsorship arrangement, the Executive Director has determined, in his opinion, that the topic area being used fits the parameters of the Board guidelines and will benefit the NFL mission and the event. In no cases has the integrity of the event or the NFL been compromised by these relationships. I can assure the PFD community, that the NFL does not “sell” resolutions. It makes sponsorship agreements and partnerships (within Board parameters) in which topic areas often play a role in a much larger picture. For example, a set of sponsored topic areas may result in the nation’s largest free online video portal of educational materials in forensics. A partnership on a topic area may result in several thousands of dollars in scholarships or extended service learning opportunities in New York, DC, or abroad. A partnership grant may allow for students from several foreign nations to engage our members in life changing debate experiences. A sponsorship or partnership may result in coverage of our activity in major media outlets. In the past decade, sponsored events, topics, and partnership programs have involved all forms of debate and speech and have generated countless resources, over 1.5 million dollars in scholarships, and over 3 million dollars in additional financial resources that have been used to benefit secondary speech and debate.

The debate on whether or not topic areas should be used as an asset in the acquisition of resources for the NFL and the activity is a good and healthy debate. People have argued that topic areas should be chosen first then used as potential assets in support acquisition to allow for a more democratic process. In the past, this idea has been dismissed because it would require knowledge of topic areas several months in advance and would drastically limit the support pool at times. Some have argued that topics should never be repeated. This is a reasonable argument, but the underlying questions of when a topic is current again and when resolutions overlap in topic areas will always be disputable. It is a discussion that should happen and, if deemed appropriate, should elicit positive policy change by the NFL board.

However, I ask the community not to confuse the use of topic areas in partnerships with dissatisfaction over the wording of resolutions. I feel strongly that all topic areas presented this year have certainly met the current topic parameters for PFD that were designed and approved by a national committee of PFD coaches. They have been timely and all are debatable issues. If the wording of resolutions has created problems, then that is a subject unrelated to partners and sponsors, unless one feels that there is no feasible way to write a resolution on a particular topic area. I do not believe this to be the case. The issue of proper resolution wording is common in all forms of debate and extremely challenging for any team of writers. For this reason, the NFL is committed to continually revisiting the wording process to ensure the most debatable and educational resolutions.

Thank you for reading. I hope this post can help further the intellectual discourse on the issue and answer some lingering questions. Although it will not be feasible for me to participate in on going “blog dialogue”, the opinions of the PFD community do matter, and I and my staff will continue to review posts, emails, and shared concerns and will convey your thoughts with the NFL Board of Directors as they establish policies moving forward.

Sincerely,
J. Scott Wunn
Executive Director
National Forensic League

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The January 2010 (Obama’s Plan for Afghanistan) edition of Crossfire Briefs is now available as a free download.