The University of Wyoming would like to invite applications to the 2024 University of Wyoming Round Robin, April 19th-20th. The tournament will be held in-person in Laramie. We will have three divisions: LD, PF, and policy. We will aim to have two pods in every division where there is sufficient interest. That means schools may have up to two entries accepted per division. Final entries will be selected by a UW Debate committee based on their competitive record this year. 

There will be no entry fees, no judge requirements, and UW will provide all meals. We can also provide hotel rooms for any team that needs financial assistance. We hope our tournament will help teams prepare for the NSDA "Last Chance" qualifier, or knock the rust off for students already qualified for NSDA Nationals, but most of all we would like to make the Round Robin a very special experience for students that attend. We will be going all out to provide an amazing experience in regards to the competition, judging, food, trophies, and more. This year, given that we could not host our regular tournament, the UW traveling trophies will be awarded at the Round Robin. 

The application deadline is 4/1/2024 (though earlier applications are appreciated!). ​

Congrats to the NSDA National qualifiers from Hole in the Wall today, and good luck to those of you competing at Wind River next weekend!

For those who are still hungry for their "last chance," UW would like to invite Wyoming high schools to compete at the NSDA Last Chance Qualifier (4/25-27) from our campus. For anyone not familiar, the "Last Chance" is just that: a final, national tournament where folks can compete one more time to attempt to qualify for NSDA Nationals. 

The Last Chance is an online tournament, but we'd love if folks came to Laramie where we can offer an in-person atmosphere of Wyoming schools coming together to compete against the rest of the nation. We will provide competition rooms, meals, and financial assistance to facilitate this. 

Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate
 
I’ve had the opportunity to do a little research on the new PF topic. What follows is a quick primer about possible pro and con arguments for the February 2024 PF resolution:
 
Resolved: The United States federal government should ban single-use plastics.
 
Aff Ground
The two most obvious aff advantage areas are the environment and public health. Of those two, I prefer focusing on the environmental harms of single-use plastics. Plastic pollution is notoriously bad for the environment, especially for marine environments like oceans and rivers. The epitome of this is the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” (aka ‘Trash Island’), a 1.6 million square mile collecting of plastic and floating trash. Some of the plastic in the patch is over 50 years old because plastic is non-biodegradable, and the patch is rapidly growing (increasing 10-fold every decade).
 
Read the complete article below the fold.

Hey gang! We'd like to know what topics you would like us to address. If you have any pressing debate questions, comment here or shoot us an email at ​[email protected].

​You can also always join Team Wyoming to get quick answers to any questions you might have at any time!

Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate
 
I’ve had the opportunity to do a little research on the new PF topic. These are my first thoughts about the January 2024 PF resolution:
 
Resolved: The United States federal government should repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
 
Intro
In short, Section 230 provides immunity for online computer services with respect to third-party content generated by its users. Translation: Facebook et al can’t get sued for almost all content that is shared by its users. Section 230 was part of the Communications Decency Act, the rest of which was tossed out by the courts as unconstitutional (ironically the rest of the law was very anti-speech and anti-internet, Section 230 was a last-ditch amendment to try and preserve the burgeoning internet by some tech-friendly Representatives).
 
What kinds of things might folks sue over if Section 230 was repealed? Well, Democrats argue that Section 230 allows hate speech and misinformation to go unchallenged. Conservatives argue that Section 230 provides platforms immunity for ideological biases (the GOP loves to argue that Big Tech’s platforms have a liberal bias).

Read the complete article below the fold.

or: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate
 
These are my first thoughts about the January / February 2024 LD resolution:
 
Resolved: The United States ought to substantially reduce its military presence in the West Asia-North Africa region.
 
I want to offer a clear disclaimer that these are off-the-cuff reactions, I have not done copious in-depth research on this topic, so these are not definitive thoughts. This is just a primer to get you thinking about the topic. You should take my observations with a grain of salt, and you should do the copious in-depth research to further your own understanding of key terms and arguments.

Read the complete article below the fold.

Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate
 
Since the summer we’ve known that people were going to interpret “expanding” social security in pretty unlimiting ways. For the most part, we’ve got a small an awesome topic that requires the affirmative to make a giant change to the economy, most often through either a federal jobs guarantee or establishing a basic income. Fewer teams have ventured into the social security area (except when talking just about expanding SSI to the territories), but many of those that have do so in ways that fundamentally change what social security is.
 
We saw this during camp season, when affs were written to “expand” social security by making it include universal health insurance. This past weekend, in the finals of the Holiday Classic, I judged an aff that expanded social security to include a “Federal Indian Health Insurance Program.” The team that read this is taking advantage of the fact that "expand social security" could mean anything, and they’re shoehorning their very not-social-security idea into social security by calling it an expansion. You can expand social security to be universal healthcare, to be health insurance for natives, etc etc ad infinitum. You can expand social security to have it include monthly snack boxes from around the world, if you want. How do you beat all the potential affs this strategy opens up?

​Read the complete article below the fold.

Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate

​Quickdraw posts are snapshot reflections that are usually spurred by observations the WDR staff have while judging at Wyoming tournaments. This quickdraw is about overviews: when you should have them and what should (and shouldn't) be in them. 

Overviews are often understood to be places where you summarize or re-explain your position for a judge. I want to complicate that! Rather than thinking of overviews as summary, I want you to think about them solely as a place to locate comparative impact calculus. If you have a lay judge, it is a good decision to add a summary of your position above that, but the more you think of overviews as comparative impact calculus, the better. If you don't have a lay judge, you should completely avoid summary. With an experienced judge, you don't need to re-explain your position because they will have understood it when you introduced it in the 1NC. ​Instead, overviews should be about winning that your impact comes first. 

Read the complete article below the fold.

Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate

​​Quickdraw posts are snapshot reflections that are usually spurred by observations the WDR staff have while judging at Wyoming tournaments. This quickdraw is about sign-posting: what it is and how you should do it. 

Sign-posting is how you announce transitions between arguments during a speech. This is in contrast to roadmaps, which tell the judge the order you will address arguments before a speech begins. Roadmaps are also different because they only tell the judge what order to put their sheets of flow paper in ("the economy DA with an overview, then solvency, then the inequality advantage"), while sign-posting addresses moving between arguments on a flow and moving between flows. Sign-posting is how you do every transition between any argument, making sure the judge knows what you're answering and isn't getting lost. It's an incredibly important skill because if you're losing the judge, even for a second, less of your arguments are going to get through to the judge. 

​The way we teach novices sign-posting is through "they say." For example, "they say 2AC number one, labor shortages now. That's wrong. First, ... ." However, that method is inefficient. It both takes a bunch of time, and it does too much explanatory work for your opponent. Sometimes teams spend so much time sign-posting through "they say" that they do a better job explaining their opponent's position than their opponents did!

I think the optimal way to sign-post is to practice "label by negating." Quite simply, this means you sign-post by negating your opponent's argument. For example, if you are reading a workforce shift DA and the aff says there are labor shortages now, then you can sign-post by saying: "NO WORKFORCE SHORTAGE NOW." I know the all caps is aggressive, but I am doing it for a reason: because label-by-negating is a shorter sign-post, you need to use your voice toolbox to make it clear you're doing sign-posting work to the judge. This means you need to change how you speak when you sign-post: either slowing down or getting louder (or sharper, more staccato -- short and sharp).

One important note: flowing well is a prerequisite to good sign-posting. I like to "box" my labels on my flow: literally drawing a box around each section of the debate, and that cues me to switch to my "sign-post" voice for the judge.