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Show Championship Debaters convene at U One hundred eight debaters from forty-eight colleges around the country will compete in the National Debate Tournament this Saturday, Sunday and Monday on the University campus. It's the grand championship of the forensics year, and the best debate team in the country will be decided. The fifty-four debate teams argue the topic, "Resolve: that greater controls should be imposed on the gathering and utilization of information about U.S. citizens by government agencies, me debate consists of four ten-minute ten-minute speeches, one by each member of the two teams, followed by four five-minute rebuttal speeches, also one by each debater. The two teams speak in alternating order, with the affirmative going first, to propose their case for adopting the resolution. In the rebuttals the alternating order starts with the negative team, so the affirmative has the last speech of the debate. The affirmative must present a justification for why the resolution should be adopted, along with a workable plan to put it into effect. The negative must argue that the affirmative justification is not reason enough to adopt the resolution, and must find workability problems and disadvantages to the plan. The most straightforward interpretation of the topic by an affirmative team has them arguing that government surveillance of private citizens is harmful and should be stopped. But the exact wording of the topic allows the affirmative to argue against any government collection of information, so don't be surprised to hear the affirmative argue against I anything from information about I the insane to information about ! marijuana offenders. |