Overview of Policy Debate Structure

Now that you have a basic understanding of the core skills of debate, it's time to teach you how those skills apply to the debate event that we are going to be focusing on for the rest of the semester, policy debate. Let's hop on in. So policy debate is an event with a year-long resolution where a two-person affirmative team and a two-person negative team debate over United States federal government policies. So overall, there are four people within a debate round. I guess five if you include the judge, but four people actively debating. And the goal of the debate round is to come to a conclusion about whether the United States should pass a specific policy. So let's take a look at some resolutions from the past. 2015 to 2016, you can see here the United States federal government should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance. Under this resolution, there would have been lots of different forms of surveillance that would have been discussed. 2018 to 2019. The United States should substantially reduce its restrictions on legal immigration to the United States. So notice that these are broad resolutions. There are tons of forms of immigration. There are asylum seekers. There are refugees. There are high-skilled immigrants. There are agricultural workers. There are all different types of immigration that could be discussed and were discussed under that resolution. And the resolution for this year is the United States federal government should substantially or should enact substantial criminal justice reform in the United States in one or more of the following areas. Forensic science, policing, sentencing. So the topic that you're going to be debating for this year is about criminal justice reform. And there's a lot that can be discussed under those broad categories of forensic science, policing, and sentencing. Let's look at some more details. So the affirmative team tries to defend the overall resolution. And now notice the resolution is very broad. If you tried to discuss all forms of criminal justice reform, if you tried to defend all types of immigration reform within a single debate, that would be basically impossible. So instead, what the affirmative team does is they present a specific plan that falls within the scope of the resolution. A topic that I debated on when I was in high school was about the United States federal government substantially increasing financial incentives for alternative energy. And so a specific plan might be to increase a particular type of renewable energy. Maybe the affirmative team would stand up and say, we need to increase solar energy and devote more money to solar panels in the United States. Whereas in a different debate round, a different affirmative team could present a plan defending wind energy or nuclear energy or geothermal energy, all the different types of renewable energies that exist. The negative team, meanwhile, tries to negate the resolution by showing why the affirmative team's plan is a bad idea. So if the affirmative team defends the resolution by presenting a plan about solar energy on the alternative energy resolution, the negative team would try to stand up and explain why putting solar panels on every house in the United States would not be a great idea. Notice that defending the entirety of the resolution would be an impossible task, or negating the entirety of the resolution would be an impossible task. But what makes policy debate really cool is you have a huge resolution to research across an entire year. And so you really come to understand and master the intricacies and nuances of a very broad topic. Teams do not get to choose which side they debate. They switch sides from affirmative to negative throughout a tournament. So even if you feel very strongly about one side of the resolution, let's say on the immigration topic. this is clearly a topic that people have very strong opinions on. Some people very adamantly believe that the United States should let more immigrants in, and some people very much believe quite strongly that we should not let any more immigrants in. Well, it doesn't matter what your personal belief is, because you will have to switch sides and debate both the affirmative and the negative throughout a tournament. And this is actually one of the best parts of debate, in my opinion. I think having to adopt multiple perspectives on a particular issue and learn the intricate arguments of both sides is one of the best skills that you can gain in life, and it will always lead to a more nuanced and complex understanding of any topic. Finally, policy debate is all about research and evidence. And you can imagine this. Because the resolution is so broad, because there are so many different types of plans that could fall under the scope of a resolution, I mean, let's just think about criminal justice reform. There are so many parts of our criminal justice system that could potentially be reformed. And even those three categories you saw are still quite broad. And so affirmative teams have to be doing a lot of research to support their particular plan. And meanwhile, negative teams have to be doing a ton of research to figure out how to negate every potential plan that could fall under the resolution. So there's a lot of research and evidence that goes into policy debate. It's one of the aspects of the activity that I think makes it so great. You really have to go deep. These are not shallow debates. In order to be a great policy debater, you need to come to a very deep understanding of the topic, and that only occurs through research and evidence and hard work. So policy debate absolutely rewards people who are willing to work hard and grind through the research and evidence and find very good topics. Let's start off with some basic burden framing. It's important to understand what the affirmative team is trying to do in a debate, and so it's really important that you have these terms in your notes. So first is presumption. The affirmative team has to overcome presumption. Now, this term will probably never be introduced within a debate, but it's a really good way to think about what's going on in a debate round. And here's what presumption is. It's the basic assumption that the status quo If you've never heard this term before, it's a Latin term that just means the existing state of affairs. So what is the status quo right now in October of 2020? The status quo is both Biden and Trump are gearing up for the election. The status quo is that Biden is consistently ahead in the polls. The status quo is that the coronavirus pandemic is still raging. The status quo is that the Congress has not been able to determine. a coronavirus relief package yet. So status quo is just descriptive. It's just what's going on right now. So the assumption is that the status quo is fine and shouldn't be changed unless proven otherwise. Now, I know in the fall of 2020, the idea that the status quo is fine seems quite contrary to our normal expectations. But that's actually the way that people typically think about things. Just know that passing any sort of massive change or overhaul to a system always requires more work than just letting it stay the same. And so it's the affirmative team's job to actually prove that the status quo is not okay, that the status quo is actually so problematic that it warrants some national legislation, some big federal government policy that would change the existing state of affairs. This is to hedge against any sort of framing that the affirmative team's like, let's just try to make a change. Why not? Let's take a step in the right direction. Well. I think the problem with that is it ignores the real opportunity costs that are at play with trying to pass some massive national legislation. So in debate, the status quo is innocent until proven guilty. And it's the affirmative team's burden to prove that the status quo is indeed guilty. It's not enough for the affirmative team to just say, hey, we think that this would have some advantages or we think that this would be cool. No, they need to prove that there's something deeply problematic about the existing state of affairs that warrants some huge national legislation. So to overcome presumption, the affirmative team will have to fulfill their burden of proof by upholding five stock issues. Just think about what stock issue means. You can imagine Super Smash Bros. What are your lives called? They're called stocks. Stock implies significance. So stock issues are the most significant issues within the debate round. They are the issues that frame the entirety of a policy debate round and help to give structure and organization to that debate. I'm going to have instructional videos for each of these five stock issues. So don't worry, I'm not going to go into much detail about what they are right now. All you need to know for right now, though, is that stock issues are the most significant issues within a debate round. So stock issues help a judge to determine whether affirmative team is a good or I guess conversely, a bad idea. If the affirmative team fails to uphold all five of the stock issues under a very traditional stock issue judge paradigm, you would lose the debate. And if the affirmative team is able to uphold all of the stock issues and thus prove that their plan is a good idea, then they win the debate. Here are the five stock issues. First is harms and significance, where the affirmative team will try to show that there are serious problems that exist in the status quo. Second is inherency. where the affirmative team will explain why the problems have not been solved in the status quo, why there is some sort of barrier to the problem being fixed. Third is solvency, where the affirmative team will present a specific plan and explain why that would fix the problems that they have outlined. Fourth is the disadvantage. Of course, this is a negative stock issue where the negative will introduce negative repercussions that would occur as the result of the plan. And fifth and finally is topicality, a stock issue that isn't typically introduced in a debate round, but if it is, it's because there is a debate over whether or not the specific plan in question actually falls under the year's resolution. Is it actually topical to the resolution at hand or not? Debaters can debate that out. So those are the five stock issues. Again, I'm going to create instructional videos for all five of these stock issues, so don't worry too much if you're a little bit confused about one of them or more of them. Let's look at the speech orders and times. It's really important. This is going to feel very overwhelming at first when I lay out all the different speaking orders and times. That's why I'm having you memorize it for a quiz because if you don't, then everything we do for the next month is just going to feel very confusing. But if you just do the hard work, commit a little bit of time to memorizing these various speech orders and times that I'm about to go over, then it will really help the debate round as a whole to make sense. It's actually... fairly logical once you figure out the structure and the organization of what's going on here. It's just that at first it feels quite confusing. So let me start with the basics. Remember, there are four participants in a round. There are two affirmative speakers and there are two negative speakers. You don't get to choose whether you're affirmative or negative. The tournament decides for you. You switch sides throughout a debate tournament. Now, each debater gives one constructive speech. They ask questions once. They answer questions once in cross-examination, obviously, and they give one rebuttal speech. There are two speeches a debater gives, a constructive speech, a rebuttal speech. Don't worry, you don't know what a constructive versus a rebuttal is right now. We'll get there. Just have this in your notes. And then you will cross-examine somebody once, and you will answer cross-examination questions once. Every debater does that. So that's an important starting premise. If you understand that premise, the overall organization of the round is going to make a lot more sense. And there are four speaker positions. The 1A, as it's called, which is the first affirmative speaker. the 2A, which is the second affirmative speaker, the 1N, which is the first negative speaker, and the 2N, which is the second negative speaker. So okay, hopefully this should all make a fair amount of sense so far. These are the basic speaker positions. These are the basic roles that everybody's going to have to play. Now let's actually look at the round structure, and this is where things are going to get or feel a little bit confusing. So the 1AC, It's important to have these terms in your notes and to know what they mean. So the 1AC is the first affirmative constructive. This is the first speech of the debate. Again, you don't know exactly what a constructive is yet. I'm going to define it on the next slide. But I want you to get this structure of the round in your notes. So the first affirmative speech is eight minutes long. Then there's a cross-examination right after. Now the way cross-ex works throughout the entirety of the debate, just understand this logic because it'll help it make a lot more sense. is the person who just spoke stays standing to answer questions. So the first affirmative speaker just gave the first speech of the debate round. That first speaker is going to stay standing and answer questions that the second negative speaker advances. Now, who is doing the cross-examining? So obviously, the next speech in the debate after the cross-examination is going to be a negative speech. Now, the person who does the cross-examination on any team is the person who is not about to speak. And that makes sense. Let's take a look at this. So the one NC, the first negative speaker, will stand up and give the first constructive speech from the negative side. Now look at who's doing the cross-examining of the one AC right before. It's the two one. Now why does this make sense? Well, imagine trying to ask cross-examination questions, stand up, lead a cross-examination, and then immediately give a speech right after. It would actually be really hard. So instead, this actually makes a lot of sense that the 2N, the second negative speaker, stands up and does the cross-examining so that the 1N, the first negative speaker, can be sitting there finalizing his speech, preparing to stand up and give that speech as soon as the cross-examination is done. So the important thing to understand to help this make more logical sense is the person who just did the speaking will stay standing and will answer cross-examination questions. And on the other team, the speaker who is not just about to give a speech, who is not going to stand up in the next couple minutes and give a speech is going to be the one who does the cross-examining. So with that, you should be able to figure out, well, who is going to cross-examine the one in C, the first negative constructive speaker after this speech? Maybe pause the video, think about it, see if you can guess, well, who do you think is going to come after the first negative speaker? Well, yes, the answer is going to be. the first affirmative speaker is going to cross-examine the speech because right after that, the second affirmative speaker is going to stand up and give their speech. So let's again understand the logic here. The first negative speaker gives their eight minutes of opening arguments, and then they stay standing while the first affirmative speaker who had given their speech just a little bit earlier now stands up again to cross-examine that first negative speaker. Next is the second affirmative speaker who will speak for eight minutes. And then for cross-examination, same idea. The second affirmative speaker stays standing while the first negative speaker stands up to cross-examine them. And why does that make sense? Because the first negative speaker is not about to give a speech. The second negative speaker is about to give a speech. So the second negative speaker stands up, gives their constructive for eight minutes. And then one final bit of cross-examination where the second negative speaker stays standing and then the second affirmative speaker stands up to cross-examine them. So if you look at this, This is, you know, a big part of the debate where all the constructive speeches have now finished. Remember, everybody gives one constructive speech. So after these four speeches, everyone has done that. And after those four speeches, everybody has asked one set of questions and answered one set of questions. So what remains is the rebuttals. Now, something very interesting and strange happens at the beginning of the rebuttal process. Instead of going, notice it's been alternating throughout the debate round, affirmative, negative, affirmative, negative. But as it goes to the rebuttals, the negative gets another speech. So there are two negative speeches in a row, which Feels very odd. This is actually referred to as the negative block, and it's one of the biggest advantages the negative has in the round. Why is this an advantage? Well, because they get to advance 13 minutes of unanswered arguments, and then the first affirmative rebuttal that comes right after is just five minutes. So this first affirmative rebuttal is trying to respond to 13 minutes of arguments in just five minutes. There's a huge imbalance there. and it makes the job of the 1AR very difficult. So notice the first affirmative rebuttal is given by the same person as the first affirmative constructive. The first negative rebuttal is given by the same person who gave the first negative constructive. After that is the second negative rebuttal, which is the final negative speech in the debate. That's five minutes. And then finally, there's the second affirmative rebuttal, which is five minutes. So notice the advantage the affirmative team gets in the debate round is they get to open the debate, and they get to close the debate. Having that final speech is a huge advantage in a debate round because the negative doesn't get to go up and give another speech or another set of responses. So that's huge for the affirmative. That's a big advantage, whereas the negative's advantage comes in the middle of the debate. If the negative can successfully overpower the affirmative team, especially in the negative block, that makes it almost impossible for them to catch back up. Whereas if the affirmative team can kind of hold on and make it to the second affirmative rebuttal, then there's typically a good chance that they'll be able to win the debate round. So an interesting structure to the round. Make sure you have this in your notes. This is what I want you to study and memorize. Because at first, it's very counterintuitive. It's very difficult. It just feels like a bunch of numbers, I'm sure, and it's very hard to memorize. But notice, especially on the cross-examination, there is a logic there. all right the person who just did the speaking stays standing and the person on the other team who is not about to speak does the cross-examination if you know that then this makes it a lot easier finally there's eight minutes of preparation time and prep time can be used at any point obviously not in the middle of a speech but in between any of the speeches or cross-examinations a team can ask to use some of their prep time now each team not each speaker each team gets eight minutes to total. So the affirmative team, let's say they decided before the second affirmative constructive to use their prep time, they could say, hey, we would like to use eight minutes of our prep time right now, or sorry, we would like to use some of our prep time right now. And then they would have to start timing it. Let's say they use two minutes exactly of prep time. They would say, all right, they would end the prep time as soon as they were done. They would say, we just use two minutes, which means we have six minutes of prep time left. Let's say the 1AR then uses, I don't know, three minutes of prep time after that. So they would say we had six minutes of preparation time left. We are going to start to use some more. Once they're done prepping, they stop their timer and they say, all right, we have used three minutes of prep time. That means we have three minutes remaining. And then finally, the second affirmative rebuttal could use the last little bit. Oh, whoops, I accidentally put negative constructive on the 2AC. Hold on, let me change that. Ignore the man behind the mirror. All right, so hopefully now that's correct. All right, the second affirmative constructive is the 2AC. Obviously, that's not negative. Sorry about that typo. So again, make sure to memorize this, commit this to memory. It'll take a little bit of work at first, but if you understand this, everything else we do will be a lot easier. Let's keep going. So what is a constructive and what is a rebuttal? I've been throwing these terms around. Let's define them now. So the constructive is the opening four speeches of the debate. where debaters introduce new arguments and read the evidence that will be discussed in the round. So think of the constructives as constructing the arguments and evidence of the round. The 1AC and the 1NC, so these are the first two speeches of the debate, are mostly prepared beforehand. They introduce the main arguments on both the affirmative and the negative side. So these are typically considered easier speeches. Next, the second affirmative constructive and the second negative. constructive to AC2NC. Those respond to the arguments established in those opening speeches, but oftentimes they're still reading new evidence or still establishing new arguments. Let's say in the first negative constructive, that first negative speech, the negative team introduces some new disadvantages. They say that the affirmative plan is going to cause all these big negative things to happen. Obviously, the 2AC has to stand up and read new evidence, make new responses to that. The big difference between a constructive and a rebuttal is that the rebuttal, which are the final four speeches of the debate, as you saw, are not about establishing new arguments. It's instead, think about it as during the constructives, you established all the arguments, you read all the evidence, you constructed the main claims of the debate, and the rebuttals are about closing the doors on those questions. So debaters instead are focusing on explaining why they have won, past tense, the major arguments of the debate, why they're... evidence from the constructives was better and how the judge should evaluate the round. And so they're doing framing in those final rebuttals. You can imagine that if debaters just kept going back and forth, making up new arguments every single speech, the debate would go on into infinity. It would never feel concluded. So it's really important to approach the rebuttals with a sense of, all right, the major arguments have already been introduced. It's just a question now of helping a judge to figure out why the arguments we introduce in our opening speeches have won us the debate. And that oftentimes is not evident. It requires explaining the arguments you made in greater depth as opposed to just trying to make new arguments. These are more difficult, obviously. Why? Because it relies on refuting and framing the debate round spontaneously. So whereas the constructives, you can do a lot of preparation beforehand, even the 2AC and the 2NC, as we'll find out in much later videos, You'll learn that you can actually do a lot of pre-writing in order to prepare for those speeches. But the rebuttals, you cannot pre-write what your speech is going to be because every debate round is completely different. You can have certain ideas about types of things that you want to talk about, but ultimately, you have to adapt your speech to what is going on in the round itself. And that means that the 2-NR and the 2-AR, the final two speeches, which are adapting most heavily to what has happened in the round, are the hardest speeches in the round to give. This is a very important point because it will help us to understand speaker positions in a slide or two. So the 2NR and the 2AR are the hardest speeches. They have to close out the debate, answer all of the questions, successfully give that final pitch to the judge for why they have won the round, and if they flop there, they will probably lose the debate. It doesn't matter, right? Imagine an affirmative. debate team who had a great debate for the first half of the debate, right? Let's say they give a great 2AC. Let's say they even give a great 1AR. But if the final affirmative speaker just completely flops and does a terrible job and doesn't answer the big questions and doesn't give a good pitch to the judge in that final speech, they'll probably lose. So there's a lot of pressure on those final two speeches, which makes them the hardest speeches. Finally, no new evidence and no new arguments should be made. There's a difference between explaining an argument in greater depth. Let's say we're having a debate over whether pizza is the best food ever. I'm arguing pizza is indubitably the best food ever. And one of my arguments about that to support that is that it's very cheap. You get a lot of bang for your buck with pizza. And let's say I'd introduced a New York Times study that did an overall national analysis of the cost and breakdowns of different categories of food. And it came to the conclusion that... in terms of how much food you get, in terms of the weight per dollar, pizza is one of the most cost-effective foods. I could explain that in greater depth. I could say, remember our New York Times study, this would be in the rebuttal, remember our New York Times study, which had an extensive cost breakdown. In fact, it even compared pizza to the types of food the other team, the negative team, is discussing here. And it said that even though a Taco Bell meal or a McDonald's meal might be cheaper than an overall pizza, the bottom line is that you are getting multiple meals when you buy a $20 pizza. And that actually, if you compare the overall amount of money that you are spending for the weight or the amount of food that you actually get, pizza is more efficient than Taco Bell or McDonald's. So notice I'm not making a new argument. I'm just explaining my argument in greater depth. As opposed to, imagine if my argument in my constructive speeches had been about the cheap cost of pizza. What would be bad and what you should not do is in the rebuttal say, I'm going to introduce a totally new argument and stand up and say, I actually think pizza is the best food ever because of its delicious taste. If taste hadn't been introduced in the constructive speeches, you should not bring up taste in the rebuttal speeches. You need to introduce the main arguments in the constructives. and then explain them in greater depth and help the judge to understand why those arguments were more important than the other team's arguments in the rebuttals. So rebuttals are not a place to be reading new evidence or making new arguments. That should all happen in the constructive speeches. With all that, now you should understand the speaker roles a little bit better. So let's go through just speech by speech, and there's actually going to be an instructional video for each of these speeches. After this video, basically the direction of the concluding debate instructional videos is first I'll bring you through all five stock issues. There'll be a video for each of those so you understand it. And then after that, there will be a specific video for each of these speeches. Still, I want you to have this in your notes right now. So the 1AC, the First Affirmative Constructive, it's eight minutes. This is the first speech of the debate where you introduce the main affirmative case and the plan. All right, just the basic, here's the problem in the status quo, and here's our plan to fix it. First negative speech stands up, 1NC, and they introduce the main negative arguments, why the affirmative plan is not a good idea. The 2AC stands up, next affirmative constructive, and responds to the negative arguments and reads new evidence if needed. Oftentimes, there is some evidence that needs to be read in the second affirmative constructive, particularly around the disadvantage. Second negative constructive then stands up, and this is the first part of the negative block. Remember, the negative block is the point of the debate where the negative gets two speeches in a row. And so the second negative constructive extends and expands upon the most important negative arguments and begins framing the round. And the one in R, then right after that, notice 13 minutes of straight speaking time for the negative, is the second part of the negative block, where they extend and expand upon other important negative arguments that the 2 and C did not address. and they continue framing the round don't worry there will be a video on the negative block later that will better explain the strategy of the negative block the basic thing to know though is that they are dividing and conquering they're splitting up the total issues and stock issues that they will be covering to spread the first affirmative constructive as thin as possible or sorry the first affirmative rebuttal the one ar uh a five minute long speech then responds to the entirety of the arguments of the negative block while framing the round within the context of your core affirmative arguments. The 1AR is just trying to defend the house, all right? They got swarmed by the invaders. They got the negative troops all lined up around them, and they're doing their best to just hold the line until those reinforcements in the final affirmative speech arrive. The 2NR, uh, then tries to crystallize the debate round and give the judge clear reasons to vote against the affirmative plan and preempt any potential arguments that the last affirmative speaker will go for in their final speech. That's part of what makes the 2-and-R such a difficult speech, is they're trying to preempt what they think the 2-AR is going to try to go for. Big part of strategy. And then finally, the 2-AR. All right, so five minutes of crystallizing the debate round, responding to the negative arguments, and giving the judge clear reasons to vote for the affirmative plan. So again, you can see here the first four speeches, the constructives are really about establishing new arguments, and the last four speeches are really about starting to close out the debate. Choosing a speaker position. All right, hopefully this is starting to make a little bit more sense, even if it still feels overwhelming. But some speeches, hopefully you've gotten the sense, are more difficult than others. And like I've said, the 2NR and the 2AR are the most difficult speeches. So how does it work? Who is giving what speech? You and your partner, all right? So the two-way is the main affirmative speaker. Let's think of this as the aft captain. That term is never officially used, but I like to imagine it as there's an affirmative ship and there's a negative ship. You and your partner are going to have to navigate both of those waters, right? Because every round you'll be switching from affirmative to negative, affirmative to negative. Now, the affirmative ship is a ship of hope and change. And on that ship, the second affirmative speaker in particular. is going to be doing a lot to try to sell the message of hope and change. There's a big problem, but we can fix it through this policy. Meanwhile, the 2N is the main negative speaker, the captain of the negative ship, so to speak. And the second negative speaker is really trying to sell a message of realism and caution. All right, maybe it's, hey, this problem isn't as big as the other team says, but their solution incurs a lot of disadvantages that would be quite negative. Rather than overhauling the entire system, we need to take a more cautious approach and reform it more gradually. Something like that. So 2A and the 2N. Imagine affirmative captain, neg captain. You and your partner will divide these two roles. One person will be the main affirmative captain. One person will be the main negative captain. And so here's how it works. This is a line you need to have in your notes and to think about. Whoever is the 2A, the main affirmative captain on the app, will be the 1N on the negative. Notice the 1N is an easier role in the negative side of the debate than the 2N. Conversely, whoever is the 2N on the neg, so the main negative captain, will be the 1A, the easier role, on the affirmative. So this is about balance and fairness, right? A big mistake I see novices make is they're like, well, I guess I'll be the 1A, and since I'm 1 on the affirmative, I'll just be 1 on the negative. It makes it easy, right? Well, while that might be easier to remember, I'll just be 1 on both sides, and you'll be 2 on both sides, it's really unequitable. Because whoever is the 2 is doing substantially more and harder work than the 1. So it's important that you will be 2 on one side of the debate, the second affirmative speaker or the second— second negative speaker. And then when you're on the opposite side of the resolution, you will be the first speaker. That's the important thing to understand. So the 2A focuses on researching the affirmative case, understanding its intricacies. And the 2N is focused on preparing negative strategies against the many affirmative cases you will have to negate. Now, another big mistake I see novices make is they just draw a hard line in the sand and they say, well, I'm the 2A, so I'm only going to do affirmative stuff. I will never think about negative strategy. And the 2N says, well, I'm the negative speaker, so I'm never going to help you ever with the affirmative. This is obviously dumb and misguided because no matter what, even the first negative speaker, even though their job isn't as hard as the 2N, they're still going to have to stand up and give speeches on the negative. And vice versa, right? The second negative speaker, even though their job, when they're the 1A on the affirmative, even though their job as a first affirmative speaker is not as hard as the second affirmative speaker, they're still going to have to defend the affirmative plan and cross-examination. They're still going to have to give the first affirmative rebuttal where they try to respond to the entirety of the negative block. So it's really important that you both are still working together. But in terms of your core responsibilities, this is typically where your focuses are. All right. So let's now go through an example to really make sure this makes sense. Let's imagine a fictional partnership. There is Jimmy. He is the second affirmative speaker. And there is Sagar. And he is the second negative speaker. all right so jimmy the 2a saga the 2n let's take a look at what their roles would look like in a debate round so these two are partners all right let's imagine first they are on the affirmative team so you should pause the video and think who gives the first affirmative speech if jimmy is this 2a and saga is the 2n hopefully it should be pretty obvious saga will give the first speech all right so everything in red is saga's speech everything in blue is going to be jimmy so we're just imagining them as the affirmative team so saga would stand up even though he's the main negative captain, the captain of the negative ship. When they are affirmative, he stands up, gives the first affirmative constructive, eight minutes, and then he has to respond to the questions. He has to respond to the questions. So really important. The 2N understands the affirmative plan really well. So next, the other team stands up, gives their first speech, and then after that, Sager would stand up again to cross-examine the first negative constructive. Why does that make sense? because Jimmy's about to give his speech. So Jimmy, the 2A, stands up and gives his 2AC. So notice the 1A, Sager, has already done three different things in the debate before Jimmy has even spoken. He's given the first affirmative speech, he's responded to cross-examination questions, and then he has asked a set of cross-examination questions. So now Jimmy stands up, he gives his 2AC, second affirmative constructive, and he stays standing to answer cross-examination questions. Then the 2NC stands up and Jimmy... after that speech, then stands up and cross examines the 2NC for three minutes. So, okay, hopefully this is making some more sense now that I'm going through a specific example. Then the 1AR goes, again, this is another team we're just focusing on Jimmy and Sagar right now. And so then Sagar stands up after the negative block, after 13 minutes of negative speaking, Sagar stands up and gives five minutes of the 1AR. Then the two and R gives the final negative speech before Jimmy finally stands up again and gives the second affirmative rebuttal, the final affirmative rebuttal of the speech, which is five minutes long. And of course, they have eight minutes of prep time. Okay, hopefully that makes sense on the affirmative side. I actually recommend writing this out again. I think it will help to solidify it in your memory and maybe using highlighting or different pen colors like I've done here to help color code it for yourself. Because I really think having the specific example and imagining this fictional team of Jimmy and Sagar on the affirmative, and then again in just a moment on the negative, will really help you to understand the round structure. So next, let's now imagine them on the negative. They are now on the negative side, okay? So Jimmy and Sagar, they finish round one, they took a breather, now they're paired against a totally different team, they're now on the negative side of the resolution. So okay, the first affirmative constructive goes up, they're just sitting there, they're preparing, they're listening carefully to the speech, and then after that, Sagar The 2N will stand up and cross-examine that 1AC. And that makes sense because Jimmy's about to speak. Jimmy stands up, even though he's the affirmative captain, he gives the first negative constructive speech. And again, this is mostly a pre-prepared speech. A lot of the work would have already been done before the tournament as they were thinking through their strategy against the various affirmatives. So Jimmy stands up, he gives us a one and C, the first constructive for eight minutes. And then he stays standing as the affirmative team stands up and cross-examines him. After that, The 2AC then stands up. The other team, the affirmative team, stands up, responds to the arguments for eight minutes. Now you should ask yourself, who's going to cross-examine the 2AC? Is it going to be Jimmy or is it going to be Sagar? Hopefully you answer Jimmy because Jimmy is not about to give a speech right after this. So Jimmy stands up, cross-examines the 2AC. He asks them a series of questions and then Sagar stands up to give his negative constructive. All right. So you can see hopefully the flow of this round. Sager was seen very early in the debate when he cross-examined the first affirmative speech. But then he was sitting down and just listening and preparing for a pretty long period of time before standing up again right here. Then he stays standing, responds to cross-examination questions for three minutes. And then right after that, Jimmy goes. So notice Jimmy for the 1 and R actually has a pretty big advantage. What is this advantage here? Well, because the negative splits up the block. So Sagar is taking, you know, maybe two thirds of the arguments and Jimmy is taking one third of the arguments or some division kind of like that. Well, Jimmy, during Sagar's 2NC, can sit there and prepare. So he has eight minutes of preparation time while his partner is speaking. And then during the cross-examination, he has another three minutes to prepare. So it's functionally as if Jimmy gets 11 minutes to just sit there and prepare a speech, which is more prep time than pretty much any other speech in a debate. Then the 1AR stands up, gives a speech. And then the 2NR, a sogger, stands up, gives the final negative rebuttal of the round. Remember, hardest speech on the negative side. And then the affirmative team closes out the debate. And of course, preparation time. So that's the overall structure of a round. Hopefully this makes more sense now that we've gone through the various speakers. It's really important that you go back and review your notes. There were a lot of terms that I tossed out in this video, specifically about the burden of the affirmative, about... the resolution and how that works, and most importantly about the various speaker roles. So if you were confused by this, make sure to go back and rewatch it because you will be expected to understand the terms that were given in this video as well as have these speaker positions memorized. It's important you also understand the difference between a constructive and a rebuttal. All of this is going to be fair game for a quiz. I found if I do not give a quiz on this material, students will be perpetually confused for a very, very long time about how a round works or who is supposed to be speaking when or what is even going on. But if you have this basic understanding, this foundation memorized, it's just a little bit of work. But once you get over that hump, it will make everything make a lot more sense. And so know that going into the future, we're going to have videos that break down each of the five stock issues. And then we're going to have videos that break down each of these eight speeches as well as their cross-examination. So gear up for that. I think it's going to be an exciting journey here as we break down all of the intricacies of policy debate. But congratulations, you made your first step in the right direction. We are now one step closer to rolling up our sleeves and getting into an actual full-length debate round. So this is exciting stuff. I'm excited to see what you all bring to the table when we have our final debates at the end of the semester.

So overall, there are four people within a debate round. I guess five if you include the judge, but four people actively debating. And the goal of the debate round is to come to a conclusion about whether the United States should pass a specific policy. So let's take a look at some resolutions from the past. 2015 to 2016, you can see here the United States federal government should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance.

Under this resolution, there would have been lots of different forms of surveillance that would have been discussed. 2018 to 2019. The United States should substantially reduce its restrictions on legal immigration to the United States. So notice that these are broad resolutions.

There are tons of forms of immigration. There are asylum seekers. There are refugees.

There are high-skilled immigrants. There are agricultural workers. There are all different types of immigration that could be discussed and were discussed under that resolution. And the resolution for this year is the United States federal government should substantially or should enact substantial criminal justice reform in the United States in one or more of the following areas. Forensic science, policing, sentencing.

So the topic that you're going to be debating for this year is about criminal justice reform. And there's a lot that can be discussed under those broad categories of forensic science, policing, and sentencing. Let's look at some more details.

So the affirmative team tries to defend the overall resolution. And now notice the resolution is very broad. If you tried to discuss all forms of criminal justice reform, if you tried to defend all types of immigration reform within a single debate, that would be basically impossible. So instead, what the affirmative team does is they present a specific plan that falls within the scope of the resolution.

A topic that I debated on when I was in high school was about the United States federal government substantially increasing financial incentives for alternative energy. And so a specific plan might be to increase a particular type of renewable energy. Maybe the affirmative team would stand up and say, we need to increase solar energy and devote more money to solar panels in the United States. Whereas in a different debate round, a different affirmative team could present a plan defending wind energy or nuclear energy or geothermal energy, all the different types of renewable energies that exist. The negative team, meanwhile, tries to negate the resolution by showing why the affirmative team's plan is a bad idea.

So if the affirmative team defends the resolution by presenting a plan about solar energy on the alternative energy resolution, the negative team would try to stand up and explain why putting solar panels on every house in the United States would not be a great idea. Notice that defending the entirety of the resolution would be an impossible task, or negating the entirety of the resolution would be an impossible task. But what makes policy debate really cool is you have a huge resolution to research across an entire year.

And so you really come to understand and master the intricacies and nuances of a very broad topic. Teams do not get to choose which side they debate. They switch sides from affirmative to negative throughout a tournament. So even if you feel very strongly about one side of the resolution, let's say on the immigration topic.

this is clearly a topic that people have very strong opinions on. Some people very adamantly believe that the United States should let more immigrants in, and some people very much believe quite strongly that we should not let any more immigrants in. Well, it doesn't matter what your personal belief is, because you will have to switch sides and debate both the affirmative and the negative throughout a tournament.

And this is actually one of the best parts of debate, in my opinion. I think having to adopt multiple perspectives on a particular issue and learn the intricate arguments of both sides is one of the best skills that you can gain in life, and it will always lead to a more nuanced and complex understanding of any topic. Finally, policy debate is all about research and evidence. And you can imagine this.

Because the resolution is so broad, because there are so many different types of plans that could fall under the scope of a resolution, I mean, let's just think about criminal justice reform. There are so many parts of our criminal justice system that could potentially be reformed. And even those three categories you saw are still quite broad. And so affirmative teams have to be doing a lot of research to support their particular plan. And meanwhile, negative teams have to be doing a ton of research to figure out how to negate every potential plan that could fall under the resolution.

So there's a lot of research and evidence that goes into policy debate. It's one of the aspects of the activity that I think makes it so great. You really have to go deep.

These are not shallow debates. In order to be a great policy debater, you need to come to a very deep understanding of the topic, and that only occurs through research and evidence and hard work. So policy debate absolutely rewards people who are willing to work hard and grind through the research and evidence and find very good topics.

Let's start off with some basic burden framing. It's important to understand what the affirmative team is trying to do in a debate, and so it's really important that you have these terms in your notes. So first is presumption.

The affirmative team has to overcome presumption. Now, this term will probably never be introduced within a debate, but it's a really good way to think about what's going on in a debate round. And here's what presumption is. It's the basic assumption that the status quo If you've never heard this term before, it's a Latin term that just means the existing state of affairs. So what is the status quo right now in October of 2020?

The status quo is both Biden and Trump are gearing up for the election. The status quo is that Biden is consistently ahead in the polls. The status quo is that the coronavirus pandemic is still raging. The status quo is that the Congress has not been able to determine. a coronavirus relief package yet.

So status quo is just descriptive. It's just what's going on right now. So the assumption is that the status quo is fine and shouldn't be changed unless proven otherwise. Now, I know in the fall of 2020, the idea that the status quo is fine seems quite contrary to our normal expectations. But that's actually the way that people typically think about things.

Just know that passing any sort of massive change or overhaul to a system always requires more work than just letting it stay the same. And so it's the affirmative team's job to actually prove that the status quo is not okay, that the status quo is actually so problematic that it warrants some national legislation, some big federal government policy that would change the existing state of affairs. This is to hedge against any sort of framing that the affirmative team's like, let's just try to make a change. Why not?

Let's take a step in the right direction. Well. I think the problem with that is it ignores the real opportunity costs that are at play with trying to pass some massive national legislation.

So in debate, the status quo is innocent until proven guilty. And it's the affirmative team's burden to prove that the status quo is indeed guilty. It's not enough for the affirmative team to just say, hey, we think that this would have some advantages or we think that this would be cool.

No, they need to prove that there's something deeply problematic about the existing state of affairs that warrants some huge national legislation. So to overcome presumption, the affirmative team will have to fulfill their burden of proof by upholding five stock issues. Just think about what stock issue means. You can imagine Super Smash Bros. What are your lives called?

They're called stocks. Stock implies significance. So stock issues are the most significant issues within the debate round.

They are the issues that frame the entirety of a policy debate round and help to give structure and organization to that debate. I'm going to have instructional videos for each of these five stock issues. So don't worry, I'm not going to go into much detail about what they are right now.

All you need to know for right now, though, is that stock issues are the most significant issues within a debate round. So stock issues help a judge to determine whether affirmative team is a good or I guess conversely, a bad idea. If the affirmative team fails to uphold all five of the stock issues under a very traditional stock issue judge paradigm, you would lose the debate. And if the affirmative team is able to uphold all of the stock issues and thus prove that their plan is a good idea, then they win the debate.

Here are the five stock issues. First is harms and significance, where the affirmative team will try to show that there are serious problems that exist in the status quo. Second is inherency. where the affirmative team will explain why the problems have not been solved in the status quo, why there is some sort of barrier to the problem being fixed.

Third is solvency, where the affirmative team will present a specific plan and explain why that would fix the problems that they have outlined. Fourth is the disadvantage. Of course, this is a negative stock issue where the negative will introduce negative repercussions that would occur as the result of the plan. And fifth and finally is topicality, a stock issue that isn't typically introduced in a debate round, but if it is, it's because there is a debate over whether or not the specific plan in question actually falls under the year's resolution. Is it actually topical to the resolution at hand or not?

Debaters can debate that out. So those are the five stock issues. Again, I'm going to create instructional videos for all five of these stock issues, so don't worry too much if you're a little bit confused about one of them or more of them. Let's look at the speech orders and times.

It's really important. This is going to feel very overwhelming at first when I lay out all the different speaking orders and times. That's why I'm having you memorize it for a quiz because if you don't, then everything we do for the next month is just going to feel very confusing.

But if you just do the hard work, commit a little bit of time to memorizing these various speech orders and times that I'm about to go over, then it will really help the debate round as a whole to make sense. It's actually... fairly logical once you figure out the structure and the organization of what's going on here.

It's just that at first it feels quite confusing. So let me start with the basics. Remember, there are four participants in a round.

There are two affirmative speakers and there are two negative speakers. You don't get to choose whether you're affirmative or negative. The tournament decides for you.

You switch sides throughout a debate tournament. Now, each debater gives one constructive speech. They ask questions once. They answer questions once in cross-examination, obviously, and they give one rebuttal speech.

There are two speeches a debater gives, a constructive speech, a rebuttal speech. Don't worry, you don't know what a constructive versus a rebuttal is right now. We'll get there.

Just have this in your notes. And then you will cross-examine somebody once, and you will answer cross-examination questions once. Every debater does that.

So that's an important starting premise. If you understand that premise, the overall organization of the round is going to make a lot more sense. And there are four speaker positions.

The 1A, as it's called, which is the first affirmative speaker. the 2A, which is the second affirmative speaker, the 1N, which is the first negative speaker, and the 2N, which is the second negative speaker. So okay, hopefully this should all make a fair amount of sense so far.

These are the basic speaker positions. These are the basic roles that everybody's going to have to play. Now let's actually look at the round structure, and this is where things are going to get or feel a little bit confusing. So the 1AC, It's important to have these terms in your notes and to know what they mean. So the 1AC is the first affirmative constructive.

This is the first speech of the debate. Again, you don't know exactly what a constructive is yet. I'm going to define it on the next slide. But I want you to get this structure of the round in your notes. So the first affirmative speech is eight minutes long.

Then there's a cross-examination right after. Now the way cross-ex works throughout the entirety of the debate, just understand this logic because it'll help it make a lot more sense. is the person who just spoke stays standing to answer questions.

So the first affirmative speaker just gave the first speech of the debate round. That first speaker is going to stay standing and answer questions that the second negative speaker advances. Now, who is doing the cross-examining?

So obviously, the next speech in the debate after the cross-examination is going to be a negative speech. Now, the person who does the cross-examination on any team is the person who is not about to speak. And that makes sense.

Let's take a look at this. So the one NC, the first negative speaker, will stand up and give the first constructive speech from the negative side. Now look at who's doing the cross-examining of the one AC right before. It's the two one.

Now why does this make sense? Well, imagine trying to ask cross-examination questions, stand up, lead a cross-examination, and then immediately give a speech right after. It would actually be really hard.

So instead, this actually makes a lot of sense that the 2N, the second negative speaker, stands up and does the cross-examining so that the 1N, the first negative speaker, can be sitting there finalizing his speech, preparing to stand up and give that speech as soon as the cross-examination is done. So the important thing to understand to help this make more logical sense is the person who just did the speaking will stay standing and will answer cross-examination questions. And on the other team, the speaker who is not just about to give a speech, who is not going to stand up in the next couple minutes and give a speech is going to be the one who does the cross-examining. So with that, you should be able to figure out, well, who is going to cross-examine the one in C, the first negative constructive speaker after this speech? Maybe pause the video, think about it, see if you can guess, well, who do you think is going to come after the first negative speaker?

Well, yes, the answer is going to be. the first affirmative speaker is going to cross-examine the speech because right after that, the second affirmative speaker is going to stand up and give their speech. So let's again understand the logic here. The first negative speaker gives their eight minutes of opening arguments, and then they stay standing while the first affirmative speaker who had given their speech just a little bit earlier now stands up again to cross-examine that first negative speaker. Next is the second affirmative speaker who will speak for eight minutes.

And then for cross-examination, same idea. The second affirmative speaker stays standing while the first negative speaker stands up to cross-examine them. And why does that make sense?

Because the first negative speaker is not about to give a speech. The second negative speaker is about to give a speech. So the second negative speaker stands up, gives their constructive for eight minutes.

And then one final bit of cross-examination where the second negative speaker stays standing and then the second affirmative speaker stands up to cross-examine them. So if you look at this, This is, you know, a big part of the debate where all the constructive speeches have now finished. Remember, everybody gives one constructive speech. So after these four speeches, everyone has done that. And after those four speeches, everybody has asked one set of questions and answered one set of questions.

So what remains is the rebuttals. Now, something very interesting and strange happens at the beginning of the rebuttal process. Instead of going, notice it's been alternating throughout the debate round, affirmative, negative, affirmative, negative.

But as it goes to the rebuttals, the negative gets another speech. So there are two negative speeches in a row, which Feels very odd. This is actually referred to as the negative block, and it's one of the biggest advantages the negative has in the round.

Why is this an advantage? Well, because they get to advance 13 minutes of unanswered arguments, and then the first affirmative rebuttal that comes right after is just five minutes. So this first affirmative rebuttal is trying to respond to 13 minutes of arguments in just five minutes. There's a huge imbalance there.

and it makes the job of the 1AR very difficult. So notice the first affirmative rebuttal is given by the same person as the first affirmative constructive. The first negative rebuttal is given by the same person who gave the first negative constructive. After that is the second negative rebuttal, which is the final negative speech in the debate. That's five minutes.

And then finally, there's the second affirmative rebuttal, which is five minutes. So notice the advantage the affirmative team gets in the debate round is they get to open the debate, and they get to close the debate. Having that final speech is a huge advantage in a debate round because the negative doesn't get to go up and give another speech or another set of responses.

So that's huge for the affirmative. That's a big advantage, whereas the negative's advantage comes in the middle of the debate. If the negative can successfully overpower the affirmative team, especially in the negative block, that makes it almost impossible for them to catch back up. Whereas if the affirmative team can kind of hold on and make it to the second affirmative rebuttal, then there's typically a good chance that they'll be able to win the debate round.

So an interesting structure to the round. Make sure you have this in your notes. This is what I want you to study and memorize. Because at first, it's very counterintuitive. It's very difficult.

It just feels like a bunch of numbers, I'm sure, and it's very hard to memorize. But notice, especially on the cross-examination, there is a logic there. all right the person who just did the speaking stays standing and the person on the other team who is not about to speak does the cross-examination if you know that then this makes it a lot easier finally there's eight minutes of preparation time and prep time can be used at any point obviously not in the middle of a speech but in between any of the speeches or cross-examinations a team can ask to use some of their prep time now each team not each speaker each team gets eight minutes to total. So the affirmative team, let's say they decided before the second affirmative constructive to use their prep time, they could say, hey, we would like to use eight minutes of our prep time right now, or sorry, we would like to use some of our prep time right now. And then they would have to start timing it.

Let's say they use two minutes exactly of prep time. They would say, all right, they would end the prep time as soon as they were done. They would say, we just use two minutes, which means we have six minutes of prep time left. Let's say the 1AR then uses, I don't know, three minutes of prep time after that.

So they would say we had six minutes of preparation time left. We are going to start to use some more. Once they're done prepping, they stop their timer and they say, all right, we have used three minutes of prep time.

That means we have three minutes remaining. And then finally, the second affirmative rebuttal could use the last little bit. Oh, whoops, I accidentally put negative constructive on the 2AC. Hold on, let me change that.

Ignore the man behind the mirror. All right, so hopefully now that's correct. All right, the second affirmative constructive is the 2AC. Obviously, that's not negative. Sorry about that typo.

So again, make sure to memorize this, commit this to memory. It'll take a little bit of work at first, but if you understand this, everything else we do will be a lot easier. Let's keep going. So what is a constructive and what is a rebuttal? I've been throwing these terms around.

Let's define them now. So the constructive is the opening four speeches of the debate. where debaters introduce new arguments and read the evidence that will be discussed in the round. So think of the constructives as constructing the arguments and evidence of the round. The 1AC and the 1NC, so these are the first two speeches of the debate, are mostly prepared beforehand.

They introduce the main arguments on both the affirmative and the negative side. So these are typically considered easier speeches. Next, the second affirmative constructive and the second negative.

constructive to AC2NC. Those respond to the arguments established in those opening speeches, but oftentimes they're still reading new evidence or still establishing new arguments. Let's say in the first negative constructive, that first negative speech, the negative team introduces some new disadvantages.

They say that the affirmative plan is going to cause all these big negative things to happen. Obviously, the 2AC has to stand up and read new evidence, make new responses to that. The big difference between a constructive and a rebuttal is that the rebuttal, which are the final four speeches of the debate, as you saw, are not about establishing new arguments.

It's instead, think about it as during the constructives, you established all the arguments, you read all the evidence, you constructed the main claims of the debate, and the rebuttals are about closing the doors on those questions. So debaters instead are focusing on explaining why they have won, past tense, the major arguments of the debate, why they're... evidence from the constructives was better and how the judge should evaluate the round.

And so they're doing framing in those final rebuttals. You can imagine that if debaters just kept going back and forth, making up new arguments every single speech, the debate would go on into infinity. It would never feel concluded.

So it's really important to approach the rebuttals with a sense of, all right, the major arguments have already been introduced. It's just a question now of helping a judge to figure out why the arguments we introduce in our opening speeches have won us the debate. And that oftentimes is not evident.

It requires explaining the arguments you made in greater depth as opposed to just trying to make new arguments. These are more difficult, obviously. Why? Because it relies on refuting and framing the debate round spontaneously. So whereas the constructives, you can do a lot of preparation beforehand, even the 2AC and the 2NC, as we'll find out in much later videos, You'll learn that you can actually do a lot of pre-writing in order to prepare for those speeches.

But the rebuttals, you cannot pre-write what your speech is going to be because every debate round is completely different. You can have certain ideas about types of things that you want to talk about, but ultimately, you have to adapt your speech to what is going on in the round itself. And that means that the 2-NR and the 2-AR, the final two speeches, which are adapting most heavily to what has happened in the round, are the hardest speeches in the round to give. This is a very important point because it will help us to understand speaker positions in a slide or two. So the 2NR and the 2AR are the hardest speeches.

They have to close out the debate, answer all of the questions, successfully give that final pitch to the judge for why they have won the round, and if they flop there, they will probably lose the debate. It doesn't matter, right? Imagine an affirmative.

debate team who had a great debate for the first half of the debate, right? Let's say they give a great 2AC. Let's say they even give a great 1AR. But if the final affirmative speaker just completely flops and does a terrible job and doesn't answer the big questions and doesn't give a good pitch to the judge in that final speech, they'll probably lose. So there's a lot of pressure on those final two speeches, which makes them the hardest speeches.

Finally, no new evidence and no new arguments should be made. There's a difference between explaining an argument in greater depth. Let's say we're having a debate over whether pizza is the best food ever.

I'm arguing pizza is indubitably the best food ever. And one of my arguments about that to support that is that it's very cheap. You get a lot of bang for your buck with pizza. And let's say I'd introduced a New York Times study that did an overall national analysis of the cost and breakdowns of different categories of food.

And it came to the conclusion that... in terms of how much food you get, in terms of the weight per dollar, pizza is one of the most cost-effective foods. I could explain that in greater depth. I could say, remember our New York Times study, this would be in the rebuttal, remember our New York Times study, which had an extensive cost breakdown. In fact, it even compared pizza to the types of food the other team, the negative team, is discussing here.

And it said that even though a Taco Bell meal or a McDonald's meal might be cheaper than an overall pizza, the bottom line is that you are getting multiple meals when you buy a $20 pizza. And that actually, if you compare the overall amount of money that you are spending for the weight or the amount of food that you actually get, pizza is more efficient than Taco Bell or McDonald's. So notice I'm not making a new argument.

I'm just explaining my argument in greater depth. As opposed to, imagine if my argument in my constructive speeches had been about the cheap cost of pizza. What would be bad and what you should not do is in the rebuttal say, I'm going to introduce a totally new argument and stand up and say, I actually think pizza is the best food ever because of its delicious taste. If taste hadn't been introduced in the constructive speeches, you should not bring up taste in the rebuttal speeches. You need to introduce the main arguments in the constructives.

and then explain them in greater depth and help the judge to understand why those arguments were more important than the other team's arguments in the rebuttals. So rebuttals are not a place to be reading new evidence or making new arguments. That should all happen in the constructive speeches.

With all that, now you should understand the speaker roles a little bit better. So let's go through just speech by speech, and there's actually going to be an instructional video for each of these speeches. After this video, basically the direction of the concluding debate instructional videos is first I'll bring you through all five stock issues. There'll be a video for each of those so you understand it.

And then after that, there will be a specific video for each of these speeches. Still, I want you to have this in your notes right now. So the 1AC, the First Affirmative Constructive, it's eight minutes.

This is the first speech of the debate where you introduce the main affirmative case and the plan. All right, just the basic, here's the problem in the status quo, and here's our plan to fix it. First negative speech stands up, 1NC, and they introduce the main negative arguments, why the affirmative plan is not a good idea.

The 2AC stands up, next affirmative constructive, and responds to the negative arguments and reads new evidence if needed. Oftentimes, there is some evidence that needs to be read in the second affirmative constructive, particularly around the disadvantage. Second negative constructive then stands up, and this is the first part of the negative block.

Remember, the negative block is the point of the debate where the negative gets two speeches in a row. And so the second negative constructive extends and expands upon the most important negative arguments and begins framing the round. And the one in R, then right after that, notice 13 minutes of straight speaking time for the negative, is the second part of the negative block, where they extend and expand upon other important negative arguments that the 2 and C did not address. and they continue framing the round don't worry there will be a video on the negative block later that will better explain the strategy of the negative block the basic thing to know though is that they are dividing and conquering they're splitting up the total issues and stock issues that they will be covering to spread the first affirmative constructive as thin as possible or sorry the first affirmative rebuttal the one ar uh a five minute long speech then responds to the entirety of the arguments of the negative block while framing the round within the context of your core affirmative arguments.

The 1AR is just trying to defend the house, all right? They got swarmed by the invaders. They got the negative troops all lined up around them, and they're doing their best to just hold the line until those reinforcements in the final affirmative speech arrive.

The 2NR, uh, then tries to crystallize the debate round and give the judge clear reasons to vote against the affirmative plan and preempt any potential arguments that the last affirmative speaker will go for in their final speech. That's part of what makes the 2-and-R such a difficult speech, is they're trying to preempt what they think the 2-AR is going to try to go for. Big part of strategy. And then finally, the 2-AR. All right, so five minutes of crystallizing the debate round, responding to the negative arguments, and giving the judge clear reasons to vote for the affirmative plan.

So again, you can see here the first four speeches, the constructives are really about establishing new arguments, and the last four speeches are really about starting to close out the debate. Choosing a speaker position. All right, hopefully this is starting to make a little bit more sense, even if it still feels overwhelming. But some speeches, hopefully you've gotten the sense, are more difficult than others.

And like I've said, the 2NR and the 2AR are the most difficult speeches. So how does it work? Who is giving what speech? You and your partner, all right?

So the two-way is the main affirmative speaker. Let's think of this as the aft captain. That term is never officially used, but I like to imagine it as there's an affirmative ship and there's a negative ship. You and your partner are going to have to navigate both of those waters, right?

Because every round you'll be switching from affirmative to negative, affirmative to negative. Now, the affirmative ship is a ship of hope and change. And on that ship, the second affirmative speaker in particular. is going to be doing a lot to try to sell the message of hope and change.

There's a big problem, but we can fix it through this policy. Meanwhile, the 2N is the main negative speaker, the captain of the negative ship, so to speak. And the second negative speaker is really trying to sell a message of realism and caution. All right, maybe it's, hey, this problem isn't as big as the other team says, but their solution incurs a lot of disadvantages that would be quite negative. Rather than overhauling the entire system, we need to take a more cautious approach and reform it more gradually.

Something like that. So 2A and the 2N. Imagine affirmative captain, neg captain. You and your partner will divide these two roles.

One person will be the main affirmative captain. One person will be the main negative captain. And so here's how it works.

This is a line you need to have in your notes and to think about. Whoever is the 2A, the main affirmative captain on the app, will be the 1N on the negative. Notice the 1N is an easier role in the negative side of the debate than the 2N.

Conversely, whoever is the 2N on the neg, so the main negative captain, will be the 1A, the easier role, on the affirmative. So this is about balance and fairness, right? A big mistake I see novices make is they're like, well, I guess I'll be the 1A, and since I'm 1 on the affirmative, I'll just be 1 on the negative.

It makes it easy, right? Well, while that might be easier to remember, I'll just be 1 on both sides, and you'll be 2 on both sides, it's really unequitable. Because whoever is the 2 is doing substantially more and harder work than the 1. So it's important that you will be 2 on one side of the debate, the second affirmative speaker or the second— second negative speaker.

And then when you're on the opposite side of the resolution, you will be the first speaker. That's the important thing to understand. So the 2A focuses on researching the affirmative case, understanding its intricacies.

And the 2N is focused on preparing negative strategies against the many affirmative cases you will have to negate. Now, another big mistake I see novices make is they just draw a hard line in the sand and they say, well, I'm the 2A, so I'm only going to do affirmative stuff. I will never think about negative strategy.

And the 2N says, well, I'm the negative speaker, so I'm never going to help you ever with the affirmative. This is obviously dumb and misguided because no matter what, even the first negative speaker, even though their job isn't as hard as the 2N, they're still going to have to stand up and give speeches on the negative. And vice versa, right?

The second negative speaker, even though their job, when they're the 1A on the affirmative, even though their job as a first affirmative speaker is not as hard as the second affirmative speaker, they're still going to have to defend the affirmative plan and cross-examination. They're still going to have to give the first affirmative rebuttal where they try to respond to the entirety of the negative block. So it's really important that you both are still working together. But in terms of your core responsibilities, this is typically where your focuses are. All right.

So let's now go through an example to really make sure this makes sense. Let's imagine a fictional partnership. There is Jimmy. He is the second affirmative speaker. And there is Sagar.

And he is the second negative speaker. all right so jimmy the 2a saga the 2n let's take a look at what their roles would look like in a debate round so these two are partners all right let's imagine first they are on the affirmative team so you should pause the video and think who gives the first affirmative speech if jimmy is this 2a and saga is the 2n hopefully it should be pretty obvious saga will give the first speech all right so everything in red is saga's speech everything in blue is going to be jimmy so we're just imagining them as the affirmative team so saga would stand up even though he's the main negative captain, the captain of the negative ship. When they are affirmative, he stands up, gives the first affirmative constructive, eight minutes, and then he has to respond to the questions.

He has to respond to the questions. So really important. The 2N understands the affirmative plan really well.

So next, the other team stands up, gives their first speech, and then after that, Sager would stand up again to cross-examine the first negative constructive. Why does that make sense? because Jimmy's about to give his speech.

So Jimmy, the 2A, stands up and gives his 2AC. So notice the 1A, Sager, has already done three different things in the debate before Jimmy has even spoken. He's given the first affirmative speech, he's responded to cross-examination questions, and then he has asked a set of cross-examination questions.

So now Jimmy stands up, he gives his 2AC, second affirmative constructive, and he stays standing to answer cross-examination questions. Then the 2NC stands up and Jimmy... after that speech, then stands up and cross examines the 2NC for three minutes.

So, okay, hopefully this is making some more sense now that I'm going through a specific example. Then the 1AR goes, again, this is another team we're just focusing on Jimmy and Sagar right now. And so then Sagar stands up after the negative block, after 13 minutes of negative speaking, Sagar stands up and gives five minutes of the 1AR. Then the two and R gives the final negative speech before Jimmy finally stands up again and gives the second affirmative rebuttal, the final affirmative rebuttal of the speech, which is five minutes long. And of course, they have eight minutes of prep time.

Okay, hopefully that makes sense on the affirmative side. I actually recommend writing this out again. I think it will help to solidify it in your memory and maybe using highlighting or different pen colors like I've done here to help color code it for yourself. Because I really think having the specific example and imagining this fictional team of Jimmy and Sagar on the affirmative, and then again in just a moment on the negative, will really help you to understand the round structure.

So next, let's now imagine them on the negative. They are now on the negative side, okay? So Jimmy and Sagar, they finish round one, they took a breather, now they're paired against a totally different team, they're now on the negative side of the resolution. So okay, the first affirmative constructive goes up, they're just sitting there, they're preparing, they're listening carefully to the speech, and then after that, Sagar The 2N will stand up and cross-examine that 1AC.

And that makes sense because Jimmy's about to speak. Jimmy stands up, even though he's the affirmative captain, he gives the first negative constructive speech. And again, this is mostly a pre-prepared speech.

A lot of the work would have already been done before the tournament as they were thinking through their strategy against the various affirmatives. So Jimmy stands up, he gives us a one and C, the first constructive for eight minutes. And then he stays standing as the affirmative team stands up and cross-examines him. After that, The 2AC then stands up.

The other team, the affirmative team, stands up, responds to the arguments for eight minutes. Now you should ask yourself, who's going to cross-examine the 2AC? Is it going to be Jimmy or is it going to be Sagar?

Hopefully you answer Jimmy because Jimmy is not about to give a speech right after this. So Jimmy stands up, cross-examines the 2AC. He asks them a series of questions and then Sagar stands up to give his negative constructive.

All right. So you can see hopefully the flow of this round. Sager was seen very early in the debate when he cross-examined the first affirmative speech. But then he was sitting down and just listening and preparing for a pretty long period of time before standing up again right here.

Then he stays standing, responds to cross-examination questions for three minutes. And then right after that, Jimmy goes. So notice Jimmy for the 1 and R actually has a pretty big advantage.

What is this advantage here? Well, because the negative splits up the block. So Sagar is taking, you know, maybe two thirds of the arguments and Jimmy is taking one third of the arguments or some division kind of like that. Well, Jimmy, during Sagar's 2NC, can sit there and prepare.

So he has eight minutes of preparation time while his partner is speaking. And then during the cross-examination, he has another three minutes to prepare. So it's functionally as if Jimmy gets 11 minutes to just sit there and prepare a speech, which is more prep time than pretty much any other speech in a debate.

Then the 1AR stands up, gives a speech. And then the 2NR, a sogger, stands up, gives the final negative rebuttal of the round. Remember, hardest speech on the negative side.

And then the affirmative team closes out the debate. And of course, preparation time. So that's the overall structure of a round. Hopefully this makes more sense now that we've gone through the various speakers. It's really important that you go back and review your notes.

There were a lot of terms that I tossed out in this video, specifically about the burden of the affirmative, about... the resolution and how that works, and most importantly about the various speaker roles. So if you were confused by this, make sure to go back and rewatch it because you will be expected to understand the terms that were given in this video as well as have these speaker positions memorized. It's important you also understand the difference between a constructive and a rebuttal.

All of this is going to be fair game for a quiz. I found if I do not give a quiz on this material, students will be perpetually confused for a very, very long time about how a round works or who is supposed to be speaking when or what is even going on. But if you have this basic understanding, this foundation memorized, it's just a little bit of work.

But once you get over that hump, it will make everything make a lot more sense. And so know that going into the future, we're going to have videos that break down each of the five stock issues. And then we're going to have videos that break down each of these eight speeches as well as their cross-examination.

So gear up for that. I think it's going to be an exciting journey here as we break down all of the intricacies of policy debate. But congratulations, you made your first step in the right direction. We are now one step closer to rolling up our sleeves and getting into an actual full-length debate round. So this is exciting stuff.

I'm excited to see what you all bring to the table when we have our final debates at the end of the semester.

Transcript for:Overview of Policy Debate Structure

Transcript for:
Overview of Policy Debate Structure