National Parliamentary Debate Association
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The National Parliamentary Debate Association (NPDA) is one of two major United States national organizations which organizes intercollegiate parliamentary debate competition. The other is the American Parliamentary Debating Association (APDA). The NPDA is a relatively young organization, but it has already become one of the largest debate organizations in the United States.
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The Rules of NPDA Debate
In tournaments sponsored or sanctioned by the NPDA, teams of two persons debate head-to-head. Tournaments issue a new topic each round, generally on issues such as politics, philosophy, and current affairs, and speeches begin after limited preparation time.
Any mature debate circuit will develop its own customs and practices. However, the NPDA rules (http://cas.bethel.edu/dept/comm/npda/rules.html) are very laissez-faire, preferring to let the norms of what constitutes valid argumentation be subjects for the debate itself. The rules primarily seek to implement a few features of the debate that have to be specified for procedural reasons.
The first of these is the short period of time for preparing for a debate. Parliamentary debate, which is often shortened as "parli," is a debate format in which tournament officials assign a new topic every round. After the announcment of the topic, the two teams have a limited preparation time (usually 15 minutes) during which to write out their respective cases.
The second important rule is time limits. The standard time limits for an NPDA debate are:
- Prime Minister's Constructive: 7 minutes
- Leader of Opposition's Constructive: 8 minutes
- Member of Government's Constructive: 8 minutes
- Member of Opposition's Constructive: 8 minutes
- Leader of Opposition's Rebuttal: 4 minutes
- Prime Minister's Rebuttal: 5 minutes
There are tournaments, however, at which these are modified, generally to a 7-7-7-7-5-5 format. The Claremont Colleges tournament has experimented with different time limits in the past. During constructive speeches, debaters may introduce new arguments and the speaker's opponents may rise to ask questions of the speaker. Constructive speakers can accept or reject any given question. Rebuttals are exclusively for summarizing the arguments that were made during constructives.
The third rule of importance is the ban on quoted evidence. Literally, this simply means that the debaters may not bring in printed, published evidence and consult it during the round. It is expected that debaters will use their own preexisting knowledge to back their arguments with reasoning and empirical data.
Once they enter the debating chambers, parliamentary debaters are prohibited from using published materials to supplement their arguments. This places parli in stark contrast to the other common intercollegiate debate format: policy debate. Policy debaters rely heavily on quoted evidence. Though thousands of words have been written about the differences between the two in practice, that is the only meaningful structural difference between them.
The NPDA Championship Tournament
The NPDA runs one debate tournament each year: the NPDA Championship Tournament, held in late March or early April at rotating host sites. While the inaugural tournament in 1994 only hosted around 40 teams, the 2004 Championship Tournament was the largest debate tournament in world history with over 300 teams in the field from over a half-dozen nations. The tournament also features an exhibition debate between a team of Irish debaters and a team of debaters selected by the NPDA; ironically, the US audience consistently votes for the Irish team.
This tournament's practices are generally modeled by smaller invitational tournaments, which provide the bulk of year-long competition. NPDA sanctions many of these tournaments, and the school that does the best at sanctioned invitationals over the course of the year is awarded a year-long sweepstakes championship.
Relationship to Other Tournaments and Organizations
There are usually several NPDA-sanctioned invitational tournaments throughout the country to choose from on almost every weekend of the academic year, the largest of which is held in February at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California.
Until 2001, there were only two national organizations in the U.S. devoted to parliamentary debate. With the emergence of the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence (NPTE), the situation has gotten somewhat more complicated. Some have suggested that the world of collegiate debate is best understood in terms of circuits; these different circuits breed different styles of debating and judging. While NPDA and NPTE teams are not reasonably construed as constituting separate circuits, NPTE has catered to the part of the NPDA circuit that is composed of more specialized debaters and judges.
Some prefer the invitation-only NPTE championship tournament; such people often cite the greater predictability due to a common ethos among elite teams and coaches. Other debaters and coaches prefer the NPDA championship due to its longer history, higher numbers of participants, and greater accessibility. Further, many criticize the administration of the NPTE as undemocratic. Since almost all NPTE participants also attend NPDA nationals, and since almost all NPTE-sanctioned invitational tournaments are also NPDA-sanctioned, the NPTE circuit is best conceived of as a subset of the broader NPDA circuit.
Communicating Between Tournaments
Almost from its inception, the NPDA community has taken advantage of the Internet to continue debates (and to debate about debates) between tournaments and in the off-season. For years, this took place via the official listserv, much to the chagrine of those who saw that resource as best used for official communication such as posting tournament invitations and results.
Today, much of the online debate (especially between competitors) in the NPDA community takes place via the online forum Net-Benefits.net (http://www.net-benefits.net), founded by University of Southern California then-undergraduate Jed Link. The name "Net-Benefits" is a pun, referring to the debate paradigm by which the debate judge weighs the net benefits of two competing policies. The site is now an electronic hub for discourse and information on parliamentary debate.
NPDA National Champions
Every year since 1994, the organization has held a national championship tournament. Winning teams include:
- 2005: Paul Bingham & Meredith Price (Lewis & Clark College)
- 2004: Ian Samuel & Marie Tenny (Truman State University)
- 2003: Michael Owens & Joshua Wilkerson (University of Wyoming)
- 2002: Ben Garcia & Chris Richter (University of Alaska Anchorage)
- 2001: Danny Barak & Will Trachman (University of California, Berkeley)
- 2000: Ryan Kennedy & Jacob Stutzman (Truman State University)
- 1999: Geof Brodak & Bill Herman (http://www.billyherman.com) (Colorado State University)
- 1998: Heath Curtis & Rebekah Gilbert (Concordia University, Seward)
- 1997: Dan Nelson & Marcus Paroske (Regis University)
- 1996: Ryan Levy & Scott Ruthfield (Rice University)
- 1995: Meredith Marine & Neal Sample (University of Wyoming)
- 1994: Marcus Paroske & Tammy Schultz (Regis University)
External links
- National Parliamentary Debate Association (http://www.parlidebate.org/) - homepage of the organization
- National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence (http://npte.debateaddict.com/) - view current and old NPTE rankings
- Net-Benefits.net (http://www.net-benefits.net/) - online community for colleigiate parliamentary debate.
- National Parliamentary Debate Location (http://npdl.net/) - online community for high school parliamentary debate.