National Parliamentary Debate Association

NPDA redirects here, it may also refer to nondeterministic pushdown automata.

The National Parliamentary Debate Association (NPDA) is one of the two national intercollegiate parliamentary debate organizations in the United States. The other is the American Parliamentary Debate Association. The NPDA is a relatively young organization, but it is now the largest college debate organization in the United States. Its membership is national, with participating schools on both coasts and throughout the country.

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.

Parliamentary debate, which is often shortened as "parli," is a debate format in which tournament officials assign a new topic every round. After the announcement of the topic, the two teams have a limited preparation time (usually 20 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:

• First Proposition Speaker: 7 minutes
• First Opposition Speaker: 8 minutes
• Second Proposition Speaker: 8 minutes
• Second Opposition Speaker: 8 minutes
• Opposition Rebuttal: 4 minutes
• Proposition 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, for instance, uses this 7-5 format. 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.

Over the past few years many coaches and competitors have referred to the official title of speeches with different names. These are unofficial yet very popular with many judges:

• Prime Minister Constructive
• Leader of Opposition Constructive
• Member of Government Constructive
• Member of Opposition Constructive
• Leader of Opposition Rebuttal
• Prime Minister Rebuttal

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 and research conducted prior to the start of the actual round 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 utilize quoted evidence.

Any mature debate circuit will develop its own customs and practices. Some people argue that the NPDA rules are very laissez-faire, preferring to let the norms of what constitutes valid argumentation be subjects for the debate itself. Others believe that, in recent years, the NPDA has been hesitant to allow its participants to engage in controversial, avant garde or "nontraditional" debate practices at its national championship tournament.

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 had over 300 teams in the field from over a half-dozen nations. 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 these tournaments include the Sunset Cliffs Classic held in February at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California, the season-opening Top of the Rockies tournament at the University of Wyoming in September, the Al Johnson Invitational at the Colorado College in October, the Golden Gate Invitational at the University of California, Berkeley in November, and the Hatfield Debates at Willamette University in February.

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 electronic mailing list, much to the chagrin 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, 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:

• 2011: Hank Fields & Matt Gander (University of Oregon)
• 2010: Brian Horton & Adam Testerman (Texas Tech University)
• 2009: Max Alderman & David Pena (University of Nevada, Reno)
• 2008: Kristen Owen & Anthony Putnicki (Texas Tech University)
• 2007: Tim Kamermeyer & Griffith Vertican (Point Loma Nazarene University)
• 2006: Josh Anderson & Rachel Safran (University of Puget Sound)
• 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 (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

• World Forensics Network - Online Video Conference Based Debating
• National Parliamentary Debate Association - homepage of the organization
• National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence - view current and old NPTE rankings
• Net-Benefits.net - online community for college parliamentary debate
• Debate Cooperative - online community that includes message boards for NPDA and NPTE parliamentary debate
• Parlidebate.com - Video and audio recordings of APDA, BP, CUSID and NPDA debate rounds.
• ForensicsTournament.net - online registration site for NPDA Nationals.
• STA-XL Plus Debate Tabulation Software - Software used to run many NPDA tournaments.